y      FEB  24  1919 


BR  85  .L63  1917 

Lodge,  Oliver,  1851-1940. 

Reason  and  belief 


REASON  AND  BELIEF 


WORKS  BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


Modern  Views  of  Electricity. 

Life  and  Matter. 

Pioneers  of  Science  (Illustrated). 

School  Teaching  and  School  Reform. 

Easy  Mathematics,  Arithmetic,  etc. 

Elementary  Mechanics. 

Signalling  without  Wires. 

Modern  Views  on  Matter. 

The  Substance  of  Faith. 

Electrons. 

The  Ether  of  Space. 

Science  and  Immortality. 

The  Survival  of  Man. 


REASON  AND  BELIEF 


BY 


SIR  OLIVER  LODGE 


V 


FEB  24  1919 


NEW   YORK 

MOFFAT,  YARD  AND  COMPANY 
1917 


Copyright,  1910,  by 

MOFFAT,   YARD  AND  COMPANY 

New  York 


All  Sights  Reserved 
Second  Printing,  January  1917 


THE   QUINN   A    BODEN    CO.    PRESS 
RAHWAV,    H,   i. 


TO   THE   RIGHT   HONORABLE 

ARTHUR  JAMES  BALFOUR 

PAST  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  BRITISH  ASSOCIATION 

AND  ALSO   OF   THE   SOCIETY  FOR   PSYCHICAL  RESEARCH 

THIS    LITTLE    BOOK    IS    DEDICATED    BY 

HIS   FRIEND   THE   AUTHOR 


PREFACE 

THE  converging  influence  of  discoveries 
made  during  tlie  nineteenth  century  in 
many  diverse  departments  of  knowledge  has 
of  late  years  notably  increased  the  uncertainty 
which  thoughtful  persons  have  often  felt  about 
the  best  method  of  utilising  Old  Testament 
narratives  for  the  education  and  edification  of 
children.  So  much  has  had  to  be  modified  or 
discarded,  in  deference  to  scientific  discoveries 
which  are  in  process  of  popular  assimilation, 
that  a  hesitating  cautious  attitude  is  not  only 
reasonable  but  meritorious.  Nor  has  the  diffi- 
culty been  altogether  confined  to  the  oldest 
writings ;  it  cannot  be  maintained  that  general 
conviction  of  the  truth  of  the  cardinal  doctrines 
of  the  New  Testament  has  remained  quite  un- 
shaken. 

In  so  far,  however,  as  my  own  researches  have 
led  me  to  perceive  a  profound  substratum  of 
truth  underlying  ancient  doctrines,  and  in  so 
far  as  the  progress  of  science  instead  of  un- 
dermining   actually    illustrates    and    illumines 


viii  PEEFACB 

some  of  them,  I  conceive  it  to  be  my  duty  as 
well  as  my  privilege  to  indicate  to  the  best  of 
my  ability  how  matters  stand. 
•  Utterance  on  my  part  is  excused  and  indeed 
justified  by  the  fact  that  in  the  University  with 
which  I  am  connected  a  large  number  of 
teachers  are  being  trained  every  year  for  their 
responsible  office;  and  accordingly,  acting  in 
conjunction  with  my  friend  and  colleague  the 
Professor  of  Philosophy,  J.  H.  Muirhead,  I 
have  addressed  them  from  time  to  time,  and 
have  now  written  down  part  of  the  substance  of 
Buch  discourses,  in  the  hope  that  it  may  be  use- 
ful to  others. 

Part  I.  of  this  book  deals  with  the  subject 
of  incarnation  in  general,  and  ultimately  leads 
up  to  a  brief  consideration  of  the  momentous 
Christian  doctrine  —  The  Incarnation. 

Part  II.  furnishes  hints  and  suggestions  for 
the  effective  treating  of  the  Old  Testament  in 
the  light  of  the  doctrine  of  Evolution. 

Part  III.  is  of  the  nature  of  an  Apologia  and 
anticipatory  reply  to  critics. 

The  work  is  not  argumentative,  it  is  exposi- 
tory. The  arguments  and  facts  of  experience 
on  which  the  teaching  is  based,  the  lines  on 


PREFACE  fa 

whicli  I  have  been  led  to  the  position  here  in- 
dicated and  sustained,  must  be  narrated  else- 
where ;  partly  in  the  Proceedings  of  a  Scientific 
Society,  partly  in  other  books.  The  position 
taken  in  this  book  is  the  result  of  a  lifetime  of 
scientific  study;  and  its  basis  is  one  of  fact. 
It  may  be  that  the  facts  have  been  misinter- 
preted :  if  so,  then  for  that  misinterpretation  I 
am  responsible ;  but  I  venture  to  hope  that  they 
have  led  me  a  few  steps  onward  in  the  direction 
of  the  truth.  It  is  because  this  is  my  convic- 
tion that  I  have  presumed  to  undertake  the  ex- 
position, incidentally  illustrating  it  from  the 
writings  of  such  thinkers  as  have  preceded  me 
in  the  quest,  and  have  arrived  at  the  same  sort 
of  ideas  by  other  paths. 

For  this  is  characteristic  of  truth,  that  it 
may  be  reached  by  many  diverse  routes;  and 
although  its  ultimate  peaks  are  inaccessible,  yet 
its  strenuous  disciples,  however  far  apart  they 
are  at  the  start,  and  however  roundabout  their 
journey,  may  hope  to  meet  on  such  interme- 
diate and  temporary  summits  as  can  be  attained 
at  the  present  stage  of  earthly  existence. 

Oliver  Lodge. 

September,  1910. 


CONTENTS 

PART  I.— INCARNATION 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I  Continuity  and  Persistence 3 

II  The  Adventure  of  Existence     .....  11 

III  The  Permanence  of  Personality    ....  20 

lY  Character  and  Freedom 27 

V  The  Advent  of  Christ 32 

VI  Progress  and  Suffering  and  Future  Service  42 

VII    The  Revelation  of  Christ 55 

PART  II.— THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCA- 
TION 

I    Hints  on  Teaching 69 

II    Aspects  of  Truth 74 

III  Early  History  and  Literature 86 

IV  Genesis 91 

V  Progressi\'e  Revelation 95 

VI    The  Problem  of  Evil 101 

VII    The  Human  Outlook Ill 

PART  III.— THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

I    Aims  and  Limitations 119 

II    The  Use  of  Hypotheses 132 

III    The  Appeal  to  Literature 152 

References  to  Quotations 156 

Index 163 


REASON  AND  BELIEF 

PAET  I 
INCARNATION 


■  oil  could  I  tell  ye  surely  would  believe  it ! 

Oh  could  I  only  say  what  I  have  seen! 
How  should  I  tell  or  how  can  ye  receive  it, 

How,  till  He  bringeth  you  where  I  have  been? 

[Whoso  hath  felt  the  Spirit  of  the  Highest 
Cannot  confound  nor  doubt  Him  nor  deny; 

iYea  with  one  voice,  0  world,  tho'  thou  deniest. 
Stand  thou  on  that  side,  for  on  this  am  I.' 

F.  W.  H.  Myers,  St.  Paul 


INCARNATION ' 
CHAPTER  I 

CONTINUITY  AND   PEKSISTENCE 

THERE  is  no  real  end  to  anything  in  the 
Universe,  no  end  to  any  real  existence ;  nor 
is  there  any  beginning.  "We  can  illustrate  this 
by  considering  the  history  of  a  rock  —  say  a 
sandstone  rock  for  simplicity.  It  is  formed  of 
compacted  sand;  but  the  sand  particles  are 
fragments  of  a  pre-existing  rock,  ground  to 
powder  by  the  waves;  that  rock  too  was  com- 
posed of  compacted  sand, —  and  so  on.  We 
find  a  continuance  of  the  same  material,  scat- 
tered and  re-formed,  changed  in  condition  of 
aggregation,  yet  essentially  the  same.  Such 
considerations  clearly  lead  to  no  beginning. 
Or  consider  a  cloud. —  It  manifests  itself  in 

1  Being  the  expanded  substance  of  a  Sunday  afternoon  ad- 
dress to  working  men. 

3 


«  INCARNATION 

the  sky,  seems  to  spring  into  existence  out  of 
the  blue,  and  presently  evaporates  again  and 
ceases  to  be,  as  a  cloud ;  but  as  invisible  vapour 
it  continues,  and  as  aqueous  vapour  it  existed 
before  it  condensed  into  minute  drops  of  liquid 
—  i.e.,  before  it  took  shape  and  form  and  be- 
came visible.  In  essence  it  exists  all  the  time, 
and  the  persistent  material  can  form  another 
cloud,  or  rain,  or  it  can  flow  as  a  river,  or  can 
enter  the  sea, —  but  only  to  be  evaporated  again 
in  due  time,  and  go  through  an  eternal  cycle 
of  changes. 

So  also  look  at  a  piece  of  wood  burning  in 
the  fire.  It  was  formed  originally  from  sap 
elaborated  in  the  leaves  of  a  tree,  through  the 
chemical  influence  and  energy  of  sunlight.  It 
was  composed  out  of  carbonic  acid  and  water, 
drunk  in  by  the  roots,  taken  up  into  the  labora- 
tory of  the  leaves,  and  there  decomposed  by 
sunlight,  the  oxygen  being  separated  and  lib- 
erated and  expelled  into  the  air.  And  now 
that  the  wood  is  burning,  its  carbon  and  hydro- 
gen are  re-combining  with  oxygen,  thereby  be- 
coming gaseous  again,  and  so  restoring  to  the 
atmosphere  the  carbonic  acid  and  water  out  of 
which  the  tree  was  formed.    The  same  identical 


CONTINUITY  AND  PERSISTENCE  5 

particles  of  carbon  and  hydrogen  thus  escape 
and  are  scattered;  but  presently  some  of  them 
will  be  incarnate  again  in  visible  and  tangible 
form,  through  a  repeated  operation  of  the  same 
agency,  and  may  form  part  of  some  other  kind 
of  plant;  or  other  things  may  happen  to  them. 
They  may  go  through  multifarious  adventures 
• — always  retaining  their  identity,  though  not 
their  state  of  aggregation  or  grouping. 

Or  take  the  case  of  the  earth. —  But  you  will 
say,  the  earth  had  a  beginning  and  will  have  an 
end.  Yes,  as  an  individual  assemblage  of  par- 
ticles it  has  a  beginning  and  an  end.  So  have 
the  tree  and  the  cloud  and  the  rock.  Any  in- 
dividual rock  —  the  Wrekin,  the  Matterhorn  — 
can  be  named  and  identified  and  its  history 
traced;  and  we  may  suppose  that  geologists 
could  tell  us  approximately  not  only  when  it 
arose  but  when  it  will  once  more  be  submerged 
under  the  sea.  Every  individual  collocation  or 
collection  of  particles  has  a  beginning  and  an 
end;  but  only  as  a  collection.  This  congrega- 
tion, for  instance,  began  at  3  o'clock  and  will 
end  at  4,  but  its  members  do  not  go  out  of  exist- 
ence when  they  leave,  nor  was  their  arrival  the 
beginning  of  their  life. 


6  INCARNATION 

So  it  is  with  a  planet  or  a  solar  system; 
they  represent  a  present  phase  or  manifesta- 
tion, in  a  continuous  unending  existence.  We 
see  in  the  sky  nebulse,  apparently  in  the  act  of 
slowly  forming  solar  systems;  we  also  see  in 
the  sky  collisions,  or  the  result  of  collisions, 
such  as  apparently  are  not  unlikely  to  recon- 
stitute nebulffi.  We  see  many  stages  in  the 
process  of  evolution,  as  was  discovered  by  Sir 
William  Herschel  a  century  ago, —  some  stars 
bright,  others  dark, —  suns  of  every  age,  young 
and  old,  nascent,  vigorous,  and  effete ;  —  we  see 
a  cycle  of  changes,  but  nothing  to  suggest  a  be- 
ginning, nor  yet  an  end,^  except  as  affecting  in- 
dividual temporary  assemblages. 

The  human  race  had  a  beginning, —  the  de- 
scent of  man,  his  ancestry  and  antecedents,  can 
be  studied, —  and  at  some  epoch  he  must  have 
become  what  we  call  distinctively  human;  but 
the  sx)ecies  must  have  had  antecedents  before 
that.     So  it  is  also  for  an  individual  —  in  even 

1  The  law  of  the  dissipation  of  energy  is  often  appealed  to 
as  necessitating  a  beginning  and  an  end.  I  have  elsewhere 
given  reasons  for  dissenting  from  that  view;  but  inasmuch 
as  it  is  a  moot  point,  the  caution  ought  to  be  obtruded  here, 
—  the  law,  properly  stated,  is  true  enough,  but  the  deduction 
from  it  is  uncertain. 


CONTINUITY  AND  PERSISTENCE  7 

a  closer  and  deeper  sense.    Seen  from  the  ter- 
restrial point  of  view,  v 

'  His  life  is  a  watch  or  a  vision 
Between  a  sleep  and  a  sleep.' 

But  that  which  now  appears  to  us  as  sleep  — ■ 
sleep  from  which  there  is  no  waking  —  may 
really  he  the  prelude  to  a  state  of  keen  activity. 
For  sleep  need  not  he  dreamless;  the  spirit  of 
an  entranced  person  may  he,  and  sometimes  is, 
in  an  exceptional  state  of  activity.  Quiescence 
of  the  hody  is  no  guarantee  of  quiescence  of 
the  soul ;  nor  does  death  of  the  body  convey  any 
assurance  of  the  soul's  decease.  Every  physi- 
cal analogy  is  against  s'uch  a  superficial  notion. 
(See,  for  instance,  '  Life  and  Matter,'  where 
the  subject  is  further  developed.) 

John  Smith  was  born  a  few  years  ago  and 
will  die,  but  he  will  not  go  into  nothingness; 
and  though  as  an  individual  he  began  at  birth, 
it  is  not  likely  that  he,  any  more  than  any- 
thing else,  began  from  nothing.  The  com- 
plexity of  his  organism,  the  far-reaching  quality 
of  his  mind,  combined  with  what  we  know  of  the 
leisurely  processes  of  Nature,  forbid  the  idea 
of   construction   elaborated   in   such   fantastic 


8  INCARNATION 

haste.  The  body  has  been  formed  to  a  given 
pattern,  quickly  enough;  so  may  a  plant  grow 
with  great  rapidity;  but  there  must  be  some 
entity  —  even  though  it  be  only  a  germinal 
vesicle  —  which  collects  and  arranges  the  par- 
ticles to  suit  itself.  The  specific  form  of  the 
structure  depends  on  this  entity,  not  on  the 
miscellaneous  sources  of  the  particles.  Some 
kinds  of  material  can  be  utilised,  some  can  not : 
those  which  have  been  good  for  food  serve  their 
turn  for  a  time  and  then  are  discarded  again; 
but  it  is  the  arranging  entity  for  which  we 
postulate  continuous  existence.  It  is  this  of 
which  we  may  seek  to  trace  the  continuous  and 
perennial  history.  The  discarded  body  looks 
dead  and  dismal  enough,  but  that  is  only  be- 
cause the  energising  spirit  which  constructed 
it  has  gone  beyond  our  ken :  — 

'He  that  hatli  found  some  fledg'd  bird's  nest,  may  know 
At  first  sight  if  the  bird  be  flown; 
But  what  fair  well  or  grove  it  sings  in  now, 
That  is  to  him  unknown.' 

Unknown,  yes,  but  not  therefore  unreal;  — 
all  analogy  is  against  the  idea  of  disappearance 
being  synonymous  with  destruction.    Death  is 


CONTINUITY  AND  PERSISTENCE  9 

change,  indeed, —  a  sort  of  emigration,  a 
wrenching  away  from  old  familiar  scenes,  a 
solemn  and  portentous  fact, —  but  it  is  not  anni- 
hilation. No  thoughtful  person  can  really  and 
consistently  believe  that  he  is  destined 

*  To  drop  head  foremost  iii  the  jaws 
Of  vacant  nothmg,  and  to  cease.' 

Of  every  kind  of  individual  existence  with  a 
history  —  with  an  origin  and  a  termination  — 
we  must  ask,  what  before?  and  what  after? 
For  some  kinds  of  existence  we  can  answer 
these  questions ;  for  others,  not.  But  we  know 
that  beyond  their  manifest  history  there  must 
always  be  an  infinite  past  and  an  infinite  future ; 
and  hidden  antecedents  and  sequents  may  in 
time  be  traced. 

The  experience  and  memory  of  the  past  sur- 
vive in  our  very  organisation;  we  are  the 
product  of  evolution  through  the  ages.  Con- 
scious memory  may  fail  —  does  fail, —  but  the 
effect  of  experience  lasts. 

And  it  does  not  follow  that  our  conscious 
memory  will  always  fail ;  individuality  once  be- 
gun shall  not  again  completely  cease.  Tenny- 
son foresees  no   *  re-merging  in   the  general 


10  INCAENATION 

Boul '  ;  but  rather  a  continuance  of  those  essen- 
tial characteristics  by  which  men  are  known  to 
their  friends, — 

*  Eternal  form  shall  still  divide 
The  Eternal  soul  from  all  beside; 
And  I  shall  know  him  when  we  meet/ 

It  is  not  indeed  likely  that  personality  will  ever 
cease,  if  we  recollect  what  elements  go  to  con- 
stitute a  personality.  They  are  the  most  per- 
manent and  characteristic,  the  most  vital  and 
essential,  elements  in  our  constitution.  Indi- 
viduality is  never  lost,  unless  it  be  in  some 
ultimate  and  far  distant  completion  and  richest 
fruition  of  our  being,  *  upon  the  last  and  sharp- 
est height,'  by  evanescence  and  absorption  into 
Deity.  Then,  and  only  then  —  an  infinitude  be- 
yond our  present  state  —  shall  we  '  lose  our- 
selves in  light.' 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   ADVENTUKE   OF   EXISTENCE 

IT  is  a  commonplace  but  nevertheless  a  valu- 
able saying,  that  wliat  will  persist  is  what 
we  essentially  are,  not  what  we  have, —  not  our 
casual  trappings  and  belongings.  A  shroud, 
as  the  proverb  says,  has  no  pockets.  Our  pos- 
sessions are  accidental  and  temporary,  we 
leave  them  behind,  they  are  comparatively 
trivial : 

'  I  am  not  what  I  have,  nor  what  I  do ; 
But  what  I  was  I  am,  I  am  even  I.' 

Ourselves  —  our  own  characters  —  we  take 
with  us.  It  is  all  we  do  take  with  us.  Char- 
acter and  Experience  are  our  sole  permanent 
acquisitions  here:  these  contribute  to  our  per- 
manent identity.  Our  identity  lasts  —  lasts, 
for  better  for  worse,  through  all  our  adventures, 
and  is  by  them  enlarged  and  enriched.  With 
it  r-^  illustrated  and   informed  by  them  —  we 

11 


12  INCARNATION 

journey  on  into  the  unknown,  whose  boundary 
ever  recedes  as  we  advance  —  as  each  to-mor- 
row becomes  to-day: 

*  I  am  a  part  of  all  that  I  have  met ; 

Yet  all  experience  is  an  arch  wherethro' 

Gleams  that  untravell'd  world,  whose  margin  fades 

For  ever  and  for  ever  when  I  move.' 

Existence  itself  is  a  great  adventure, —  a 
series  of  them.  Some  live  placid  lives  and 
think  to  escape  adventures, —  at  any  rate  will 
not  go  to  seek  them  —  will  try  to  avoid  them. 
But  none  can  altogether  escape.  None  can 
escape  the  adventure  of  death.  Unmistakably 
a  great  adventure  that !  —  the  entering  another 
world,  encountering  another  condition  of  being, 
facing  the  utterly  unknown;  only  shielded  by 
faith  in  beneficence  from  dismay. 

There  are  three  main  adventures  in  human 
life  —  birth,  death,  and  marriage.  Compara- 
tively few  escape  all  three.  Marriage  surely  is 
an  adventure:  it  may  turn  out  surprisingly 
well,  it  may  turn  out  disastrously  ill.  Death 
every  one  admits  to  be  an  adventure.  But 
birth, —  few  think  of  birth  in  that  way;  and 
yet    I    think    it    is    one  —  an    adventure    as 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  EXISTENCE        13 

great  as  any  perhaps, —  the  coniing  to  the 
planet,  the  becoming  an  individual,  attaining  a 
personality  which,  whether  it  begins  then  or 
not,  at  any  rate  is  to  continue.  At  birth  we 
began  a  separate  individual  existence,  but  not 
from  nothing. 

Children  often  appear  to  retain  for  a  time 
some  intuition,  some  *  shadowy  recollection  '  as 
it  were,  of  a  former  state  of  being.  And  even 
adults,  in  certain  moods,  have  *  gleams  of  more 
than  mortal  things,'  and  are  perplexed  at  times 
with  a  dim  reminiscence  as  of  previous  expe- 
riences :  — 

*  Is  it  that  in  some  brighter  sphere 
We  part  from  friends  we  meet  with  here? 
Or  do  we  see  the  Future  pass 
Over  the  Present's  dusky  glass? 
Or  what  is  that  that  makes  us  seem 
To  patch  up  fragments  of  a  dream, 
Part  of  which  comes  true,  and  part 
Beats  and  trembles  round  the  heart  ? ' 

But  children  in  especial  are  liable  to  brood 
over  the  mystery  of  existence,  in  a  way  which  is 
little  understood  and  which  they  outgrow, 
though  meanwhile  their  speculations  lead 
them  to  confuse  themselves  and  others  with 


14  INCARNATION 

*  Obstinate  questionings 
Of  sense  and  outward  things, 
Blank  misgivings  of  a  Creature 
Moving  about  in  worlds  not  realised.' 

On  the  full  meaning  of  this  we  need  not  now 
insist,  but  the  fact  is  testified  to  by  many 
writers.  Tennyson,  for  instance,  bears  wit- 
ness — 

'  For  oft 
On  me,  when  boy,  there  came  what  then  I  call'd, 
Who  knew  no  books  and  no  philosophies, 
In  my  boy-phrase  "  The  Passion  of  the  Past." 
The  first  grey  streak  of  earliest  summer-dawn, 
The  last  long  stripe  of  waning  crimson  gloom. 
As  if  the  late  and  early  were  but  one  — 
A  height,  a  broken  grange,  a  grove,  a  flower 
Had  murmurs  "  Lost  and  gone  and  lost  and  gone ! " 
What  had  he  loved,  what  had  he  lost,  the  boy  1 ' 

And  to  the  same  general  purport  an  earlier 
poet  —  Henry  Vaughan,  in  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century  —  bears  independent  testi- 
mony thus : 

'  Happy  those  early  days,  when  I 
Shin'd  in  my  angel-infancy! 
Before  I  understood  this  place 
Appointed  for  my  second  race. 


V 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  EXISTENCE       15 

When  on  some  gilded  cloud  or  flower 
My  gazing  soul  would  dwell  an  hour, 
And  in  those  weaker  glories  spy 
Some  shadows  of  eternity. 

•  ....« 

[And]  felt  through  all  this  fleshly  dress 
Bright  shoots  of  everlastingness.' 

There  is  a  deep  meaning  in  that  phrase  of 
Plotinus 

'  Descent  into  generation,' 

and  the  passage  in  which  it  occurs  is  thus  trans- 
lated by  Myers :  — 

*  Surely  before  this  descent  into 
generation  we  existed  in  the  intel- 
ligible world  ...  as  clear  souls  and 
minds  immixed  with  all  existence; 
parts  of  the  Intelligible,  nor  severed 
thence;  nor  are  we  severed  evea 
now.' 

And  Myers  himself  begins  a  poem  *  To  Ten- 
nyson '  with  the  same  idea :  — 

*.When  from  that  world  ere  death  and  birth 
He  sought  the  stem  descending  way, 
Perfecting  on  our  darkened  earth 
His  spii'it,  citizen  of  day,'  .  .  . 


16  INCARNATION 

uThese  things  are  not  said  lightly,  but  embody 
a  lifetime  of  thought  and  inquiry. 

My  message  is  that  there  is  some  great  truth 
in  the  idea  of  pre-existence ;  —  not  an  obvioua 
truth,  nor  one  easy  to  formulate, —  a  truth  diffi- 
cult to  express, —  not  to  be  identified  with  the 
guesses  of  re-incarnation  and  transmigration, 
which  may  be  fanciful.  We  may  not  have  been 
individuals  before,  but  we  are  chips  or  frag- 
ments of  a  great  mass  of  mind,  of  spirit,  and  of 
life, —  drops,  as  it  were,  taken  out  of  a  germinal 
reservoir  of  life,  and  incubated  until  incarnate 
in  a  material  body. 

This  view  is  illustrated  by  Tennyson's 

*  Out  of  the  deep,  my  child,  out  of  the  deep, 
From  that  true  world  within  the  world  we  see, 
Whereof  our  world  is  but  the  bounding  shore.' 

Or  again  by  his  famous  simile  of  a  tide  pour- 
ing in  from  the  ocean,  filling  the  harbour  with 
a  copious  flood,  and  then  ebbing  whence  it  came. 

And  the  teaching  of  '  In  Memoriam '  is 
clearly  that  individuality  begins  with  the  con- 
struction of  the  body.  It  is  surely  true  that 
Spirit  unites,  while  Body  separates.    And  so 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  EXISTENCE       17 

each  fragment  of  spirit  is  supposed  to  become 
a  separate  individual  through  incarnation :  — 

'  So  rounds  he  to  a  separate  mind 
From  whence  clear  memory  may  begin, 
As  thro'  the  frame  that  binds  him  in 
Hia  isolation  grows  defined/ 

*  Thia  use  may  lie  in  blood  and  breath/ 

Incarnation  is  the  right  word  for  conception 
and  birth ;  it  is  an  entering  into  i3esh,  a  gradual 
incarnation,  gradual  accretion  of  terrestrial 
matter,  gradual  entering  into  relation  with 
it.  The  soul  may  be  said  slowly  to  con- 
struct the  body,  and  continuously  to  leak  in 
and  take  possession  of  the  gradually  im- 
proving conditions.  Constructing  the  body,  I 
•ay,  out  of  earthly  particles, —  particles  picked 
up  in  the  first  instance  by  plants  and  ani- 
mals, then  utilised  by  us,  guided  and  arranged 
and  compacted  into  a  body,  so  as  to  represent 
our  practical  and  terrestrial  aspect, —  that  is, 
such  part  of  us  as  can  be  represented  by  what 
Tennyson  calls  *  the  house  of  a  brute  let  to  the 
soul  of  a  man.* 

For  we  are  clearly  taught  by  Science  that 


18  INCARNATION 

man  on  his  bodily  side  must  trace  his  ancestry 
through  the  animals ;  which  are  thus  in  a  sense 
his  remote  kindred.  There  was  evidently  a 
long  series  of  stages  through  which  the  physical 
mechanism  of  man  must  pass,  before  human 
faculties  could  efficiently  utilise  and  manipulate 
terrestrial  matter : 

'  Hints  and  previsions  of  whicli  faculties, 
Are  strewn  confusedly  everywhere  about 
The  inferior  natures,  and  all  lead  up  higher, 
All  shape  out  dimly  the  superior  race. 
The  heir  of  hopes  too  fair  to  turn  out  false, 
And  man  appears  at  last.' 

The  long  period  of  preparation  necessary, 
before  the  gradually  improving  body  became 
tenantable  by  anything  that  could  be  called  a 
human  soul,  is  most  impressive.  Not  suddenly, 
but  through  cosmic  processes  of  evolution,  was 
this  brought  about;  and  there  must  have  come 
a  time  when  a  definite  stage  in  the  long  history 
could  in  imagination  be  acclaimed  with  delight 
in  a  triumphant  hymn : — '  It  is  finished,  man  is 
made ! ' 

'  Of  the  earth,  earthy,'  the  primeval  man  was, 
truly,  but  he  stood  erect,  he  felt  himself  to  be 
risen  above  the  beasts ;  and  a  splendid  iDromis© 


THE  ADVENTURE  OF  EXISTENCE       19 

must  have  shone  in  the  eyes  of  that  nascent  in- 
telligence who  in  some  epoch  of  trouble  and 
distress  first  on  the  earth  uplifted  hands  of 
prayer. 

*  Through  such  fierce  hours  thy  brute  forefather  won 
Thy  mounting  hope,  the  adventure  of  the  son; 
Such  pauis  astir  his  glooming  heart  within 
That  nameless  Creature  wandered  from  his  kin; 

With  hopes  half-born,  with  burning  tears  unshed, 

Bowed  low  his  terrible  and  lonely  head; 

With  arms  uncouth,  with  knees  that  scarce  could  kneel 

Upraised  his  speechless  ultimate  appeal;  — 

Ay,  and  Heaven  heard,  and  was  with  him,  and  gave 

The  gift  that  made  him  master  and  not  slave  .  .  . 

And  some  strange  light,  past  knowing,  past  control, 

Rose  in  his  eyes,  and  shone,  and  was  a  soul. 

Finished  indeed?  —  no,  far  from  finished, 
never  finished.  Anticipation  lies  ahead,  to  all 
infinity:  but  the  evolution  of  the  human  body 
was  a  momentous  achievement;  for  thereby  a 
terrestrial  existence  was  rendered  possible  for 
beings  at  a  comparatively  advanced  stage  of 
spiritual  evolution.  Plato  and  Shakespeare 
and  Newton  lay  then  in  the  womb  of  the  future. 

And  anticipation  still  forges  ahead. 


CHAPTER  in 

THE   PERMANENCE   OF   PERSONALITy 

THE  beautiful  animal  body,  thus  slowly 
fitted  for  our  reception,  we  utilise;  and 
with  it  we  are  associated,  being  able  by  its  aid 
to  manifest  ourselves  to  others,  and  to  operate 
and  do  work  on  the  planet,  for  a  short  period 
of  some  seventy  years.  It  is  our  machine,  our 
instrument  for  manifestation,  for  living  a  prac- 
tical and  useful  life,  for  coming  into  relation 
with  other  people,  who  are  likewise  temporarily 
associated  with  matter,  and  by  it  partly  dis- 
played and  partly  disguised.  An  infant  is  thus 
apostrophised  by  Tennyson :  — 

.  .  .  '  Oh  dear  Spirit  half  lost 

In  thine  own  shadow  and  this  fleshly  sign.' 

The  body  is  our  only  means  of  effecting  phys- 
ical movements  in  the  realm  of  matter  —  the 
only  means  we  have  for  dealing  with  and  alter- 
ing the  planet  which  is  our  temporary  home. 
The  body  is  by  no  means  a  perfect  engine,  al- 

20 


THE  PERMANENCE  OF  PERSONALITY      21 

though  so  admirably  contrived;  it  requires 
much  training  and  many  repairs  —  though 
some  of  the  repairs  are  necessitated  by  our  own 
injudicious  treatment  of  it.  But  anyhow,  when 
it  has  done  its  work,  served  its  purpose,  and 
is  getting  worn  out,  the  body  is  sloughed  off 
and  left  behind,  and  we  go  on  without  it, —  no 
longer  perceptible  to  friends  still  in  the  body, 
. —  lost  to  them  till  they  rejoin  us;  and  rising 
still,  beyond  reach  of  everything  but  love  and 
service : — 

'  Souls  shall  climb  fast  their  age-long  way, 
With  all  to  conquer,  all  to  know: 

But  thou,  true  Heart!  for  aye  shalt  keep 
Thy  loyal  faith,  thine  ancient  flame ;  — 

Be  stilled  an  hour,  and  stir  from  sleep 
Reborn,  re-risen,  and  yet  the  same/ 

So  sang  F.  W.  H.  Myers;  and,  to  another 
note,  and  probably  in  another  sense,  Meredith 
thus    expressed    the    eternity   of   ideal    exist- 


ence: 


*  Full  lasting  is  the  song,  though  he, 
The  singer,  passes:  lasting  too, 
For  souls  not  lent  in  usury, 

The  rapture  of  the  forward  vieir. 


22  INCARNATION 

'With  that  I  bear  my  senses  fraught 
Till  what  I  am  fast  shoreward  drives. 
They  are  the  vessel  of  the  Thought, 
The  vessel  splits,  the  Thought  survives/ 

Yes,  the  Thought,  the  human  logos,  survives: 
having  undergone  this  curious  experience  — 
having  passed  through  the  interlude  or  episode 
of  incarnation  in  matter,  having  lived  a  ma- 
terial life  on  this  planet. 

*  Wlieref ore, '  as  St.  Paul  says,  *  we  faint  not; 
for  though  our  outward  man  is  decaying  yet 
our  inward  man  is  renewed  day  by  day.'  Nor 
will  the  loss  of  our  material  body  deprive  us 
of  all  means  of  manifestation  in  the  wider 
sense :  '  For  we  know  that  if  the  earthly  house 
of  our  bodily  frame  be  dissolved,'  we  have  a 
spiritual  or  resurrection  body  not  made  of 
earthly  matter  —  a  *  habitation  which  is  from 
heaven.'  Yea,  and  even  the  discarded  body  it- 
self will  remain  of  service  to  living  organisms 
—  its  particles  can  contribute  to  the  incarna- 
tion of  new  creatures  '  that  what  is  mortal  may 
be  swallowed  up  of  life. ' 

What  happened  before  earth-life,  we  have 
forgotten ;  —  if  we  ever  knew,  we  have  forgot- 
ten.    Our  individual  memory  begins  soon  after 


THE  PERMANENCE  OF  PERSONALITY      23 

birth.  Before  that  we  cannot  trace  identity. 
Perhaps  we  had  none.  Either  we  had  none  or 
we  have  forgotten.  The  latter  is  the  more 
poetic  mode  of  expression.  It  is  not  new.  I 
am  well  aware  that  I  am  saying  nothing  new. 
The  doctrine  is  old;  Plato  taught  it  before  the 
time  of  Christ,  Wordsworth  taught  it  early 
in  last  century, —  the  doctrine  that  when  we 
enter  into  flesh  we  leave  behind  all  memory 
of  previous  existence ; —  all,  except  for  occa- 
sional dim  and  shadowy  recollections  which, 
though  they  may  be  stronger  in  infancy,  oc- 
casionally surprise  the  grown  man  also,  from 
whose  mind  they  usually  appear  to  have  faded. 
Dimly  he  may  remember  the  days  of  his  in- 
fancy. 

*  But  he  forgets  the  days  before 
God  shut  the  doorways  of  his  head. 

The  days  have  vanished,  tone  and  tint, 
And  yet  perhaps  the  hoarding  sense 
Gives  out  at  times  (he  knows  not  whence) 

A  little  flash,  a  mystic  hint.' 

The  idea  of  some  such  amnesia,  as  it  may 
be  called,  a  supposed  dislocation  or  disruption 
of  memory,  is  suggested  by  the  analogy  of  hyp- 


24  INCAENATION 

notic  trance,  and  by  cases  of  multiple  person- 
ality; where  in  each  of  the  lower  states,  or 
strata  of  personality,  all  memory  of  what 
happened  in  the  higher  has  completely  lapsed, 
until  the  appropriate  state  is  again  entered. 
It  is  true,  and  rather  specially  instructive,  that 
in  one  of  the  highest  states  thus  accessible  it 
sometimes  happens  that  the  gaps  of  memory 
are  filled  up,  and  all  events  are  more  or  less 
recollected  —  even  those  of  lower  states  also; 
though  as  a  rule  the  memory  is  discontinuous, 
and  the  appropriate  thread  is  taken  up  again 
on  re-entering  any  given  state.  Tennyson  in- 
dicates that  such  a  notion  may  apply  to  the 
future  condition  of  surviving  personality :  — 

'As  old  mythologies  relate, 
Some  draught  of  Lethe  may  await 
The  glipping  thro'  from  state  to  state. 

Ab  here  we  find  in  trances,  men 
Forget  the  dream  that  happens  then, 
Until  they  fall  in  trance  again. 
So  might  we,  if  our  state  were  such 
Ab  one  before,  remember  much.' 

And  again  in  *  In  Memoriam  '  he  expresses 
the  same  idea;  for,  after  emphasizing  our  pres- 


THE  PERMANENCE  OF  PERSONALITY     25 

ent  forgetfulness  of  the  long  past,  and  ac- 
quiescing in  it  as  conducive  to  practical  life  here 
and  now,  he  contrasts  it  with  what  we  may  an- 
ticipate in  the  long  future,  when  we  have  passed 
beyond  the  shadow-throwing  '■  growing  hour  ' 
of  the  present,  and  have  begun  to  rise  into  the 
broader  vista  of  a  more  luminous  region. 

*  So  be  it :  there  no  shade  can  last 
In  that  deep  dawn  behind  the  tomb, 
But  clear  from  marge  to  marge  shall  bloom 

The  eternal  landscape  of  the  past.' 

We  are  said  to  be  now,  comparatively  speak- 
ing, asleep, —  entranced,  as  it  were,  by  associa- 
tion with  matter, —  an  association  which  is 
both  an  assistance  and  a  disability; — an  as- 
sistance, indeed  an  essential,  to  our  life  here; 
a  temporary  disability,  though  a  needful  ex- 
perience, as  seen  from  the  life  beyond. 

'We  are  such  stuff 
As  dreams  are  made  of,  and  our  little  life 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep.' 

So  we  are  led  to  apprehend  Wordsworth's 
immortal  poem  in  a  livelier  way,  as  not  only 
poetically  true,  but  as  an  inspired  expression 
of  actual  fact :  — 


26  INCARNATION 

'  Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting : 
The  Soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  Star, 
Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting, 

And  Cometh  from  afar: 
Not  in  entire  forgetfulness, 
And  not  in  utter  nakedness. 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 
From  God,  who  is  our  home.' 

Yes,  fragments  of  the  great  Spirit  wliich  is 
God.  This  has  gradually  dawned  upon  us. 
We  were  at  first  children  and  took  things  as 
they  came ;  though  even  then  questions  of  great 
magnitude  and  difficulty  used  to  loom  before  us 
■ —  questions  we  could  in  no  wise  answer.  Now 
that  we  are  grown  up,  some  of  us  are  still  in 
the  dark;  but  those  who  devote  their  lives  to 
study  think  that  they  are  coming  slowly  and 
partially  to  understand  the  Universe,  and  our 
place  in  it,  and  what  is  expected  of  us. 

These  are  the  questions  which  all  thought- 
ful people  are  asking;  these  are  the  questions 
whose  interest  brings  together  many  an  assem- 
blage of  serious  and  worldng  men;  these  are 
the  questions  which  are  being  asked  through- 
out Britain,  and  in  many  of  the  countries  of 
Europe,  at  the  present  time :  —  Wliy  do  we 
exist?  What  are  we  here  for?  What  does 
existence  mean  ? 


CHAPTER  IV 

CHARACTER   AND   FREEDOM 

WE  are  here  to  become  worthy  of  our 
origin,  to  develop  a  character  and  a 
will,  to  become  ripe  for  freedom.  Freedom, 
power  of  choice, —  that  is  the  dangerous  gift 
that  has  been  bestowed  upon  us  as  man. 

'  The  man  who  man  would  be  must  rule 
The  empire  of  himself.' 

There  came  a  time,  in  the  long  course  of 
evolution,  when  man  realised  that  he  was  free 
—  free  to  determine  his  own  actions, —  when 
he  realised  that  he  knew  good  and  evil,  could 
discriminate  between  them,  could  choose  the 
one  and  eschew  the  other,  could  feel  instinct- 
ively the  difference  between  right  and  wrong, 
and  could  exercise  the  power  which  was  his. 
With  that  power,  he  rose  to  perceive  the  great- 
ness—  the  greatness  as  well  as  the  danger  — 
of  this  gift  of  freedom,  and  realised  for  the  first 

27 


28  INCARNATION 

time  his  kinship,  biologically  with  the  animals, 
but  psychologically  with  the  gods. 

Perception  of  this  sublime  power  of  conscious 
choice  —  a  distinctive  mark  of  humanity  — 
must  have  first  dawned  upon  some  early  genius 
of  the  race,  some  incipient  poet  or  seer,  into 
whom  the  vivifying  Spirit  was  strongly  breathed. 
"Well  may  such  a  seer  be  called  the  First  Man, 
for  with  that  divine  inbreathing  man  became 
a  living  soul. 

The  period  which  succeeded  this  great  in- 
spiration is  called  '  the  Fall,'  for  man  naturally 
proved  as  yet  unworthy  of  the  insight  which 
had  been  vouchsafed  to  him;  but  it  was  the 
result  of  a  Eise.  It  was  the  natural  conse- 
quence of  a  rise  in  the  scale  of  existence  —  a 
step  upward  in  the  path  of  development.  But 
it  is  also  called  a  Fall,  because  man  tripped 
over  the  upward  step.  Having  the  power  of 
doing  wrong,  he  utilised  that  power,  and  fell. 
Thus  entered  Sin, —  the  conscious  doing  of 
what  we  know  to  be  wrong.  Before  that,  men 
and  women  had  been  in  a  state  of  innocency, 
like  the  animals, —  a  state  of  irresponsible,  un- 
knowing innocence, —  out  of  which  they  must 
emerge  into  light  and  knowledge  and  sorrow, 


CHARACTER  AND  FREEDOM  29 

if  a  divine  spirit  were  to  be  engrafted  on  the 
animal  stock,  if  they  were  to  become  conscious 
of  a  responsible  personal  identity. 

'And  first  a  glimmering  ease  they  had. 
And  creatures  bound  in  dream  benign, 
Obscurely  sentient,  blindly  glad, 
Felt  the  dim  lust  of  shower  and  shine; 

Then  works  the  unresting  Power,  and  lo! 

In  subtler  chain  those  germs  combine. 
Thro*  age-long  struggle  shaping  slow 

This  trembling  Self,  this  Soul  of  thine.' 

As  man  thus  rose  to  the  higher  level  of 
conscious  freedom,  that  original  condition  of 
pristine  innocency  fell  from  him ;  he  could  plead 
it  no  longer.  Henceforth  he  had  full  human 
responsibility,  and  his  destiny  rested  largely 
with  himself. 

The  severe  discipline  through  storm  and 
temptation,  thus  initiated,  has  been  felt  by 
many  a  saint  to  have  been  of  highest  value; 
and  those  who  wonder  at  the  fact  that  sin  and 
evil  have  been  allowed  to  exist  are  not  deep 
thinkers.  Milton  complains  of  their  shallow- 
ness thus :  — 


30  INCARNATION 

*  Many  there  be  that  complain  of  divine  Providence  for 
suffering  Adam  to  transgress.  Foolish  tongues!  When 
God  gave  him  reason,  he  gave  him  freedom  to  choose,  for 
reason  is  but  choosing  j  he  had  been  else  a  mere  artificial 
Adam,  such  an  Adam  as  he  is  in  the  motions  [puppet 
shows].  We  ourselves  esteem  not  of  that  obedience,  or 
love,  or  gift,  which  is  of  force;  God  therefore  left  him 
free,  set  before  him  a  provoking  object  ever  almost  in  his 
eyes;  herein  consisted  his  merit,  herein  the  right  of  his 
reward,  the  praise  of  his  abstinence.  Wherefore  did  he 
create  passions  within  us,  pleasures  round  about  us;  but 
that  these  rightly  tempered  are  the  very  ingredients  of 
virtue?  They  are  not  skilful  considerers  of  human  things, 
who  imagine  to  remove  sin,  by  removing  the  matter  of  sin.' 

Few,  very  few,  are  tlie  favoured  individuals 
who  can  receive  this  gift  of  freedom  without 
ever  abusing  it.  To  most  the  attainment  of 
a  condition  of  joyful  and  heart-whole  obedi- 
ence to  what  they  see  to  be  best  comes  through 
years  of  struggle  and  effort.  Yet  there  is  no 
redemption,  no  real  regeneration,  till  this  con- 
dition is  attained, —  till  the  whole  being  re- 
sponds enthusiastically  to  the  demands  of  the 
highest  which  it  is  able  to  perceive.  The  con- 
flict, the  warring  in  the  members,  is  then  over, 
and  the  reign  of  peace  and  undisturbed  prog- 
ress has  begun.    We  shall  attain  it  in  time, 


CHARACTER  AND  FREEDOM  31 

■ —  some  sooner,  some  later ;  the  conflict  cannot 
be  permanent,  or  it  would  ultimately  destroy 
us.  The  only  service  that  can  last  through 
infinity  is  the  Service  that  is  perfect  freedom. 

'  Oh !  who  is  he  that  hath  his  whole  life  long 
Preserved,  enlarged,  this  freedom  in  himself? 
For  this  alone  is  genuine  liberty : 
Where  is  the  favoured  being  who  hath  held 
That  course  unchecked,  unerring,  and  untired, 
In  one  perpetual  progress  smooth  and  bright  ?' 

This  is  the  ideal.  This  is  what  we  on  the 
up  track  see  before  us  as  the  destined  goal. 
Towards  that  we  are  intermittently,  and  with 
many  falls,  striving. 

Assisted?  Yes,  truly  assisted, —  led  but  not 
forced,  guided  but  not  compelled.  If  we  ask 
to  be  helped  we  are  helped  —  helped  in  ways 
we  can  as  yet  hardly  imagine  or  believe  in  — 
helped  by  other  human  beings  sometimes,  but 
helped  also  by  other  beings  and  in  other  ways 
—  ways  which  we  hardly  yet  suspect.  I  be^ 
lieve  this  to  be  literally  true. 


CHAPTEE  V 

THE   ADVENT   OF   CHRIST 

THE  revelation  of  the  Universe  is  always 
before  ns,  but  we  do  not  see.  When  one 
after  another  of  the  race  catches  a  glimpse  of 
something  beyond  previous  experience,  it  is 
not  anything  really  new  that  he  perceives.  It 
is  only  new  to  us,  because  human  senses  are 
darkened  or  because  we  are  too  busy  to  at- 
tend. The  stars  were  worlds  and  solar  systems 
all  the  time,  though  to  antiquity  they  seemed 
only  insignificant  appendages  to  earth.  The 
microbes  of  pestilence  were  active  in  the  ancient 
days,  and  their  opponents  in  the  blood  attacked 
them, —  though  the  conflict  was  all  unknown  to 
man.  Eadio-activity,  distintegrating  atoms, 
and  all  the  other  discoveries  of  physics,  are  only 
a  recent  detection  of  what  always  existed. 
Crowds  of  unsuspected  things  are  awaiting  our 
discovery  —  new    facts    in    Nature,    ay,    and 

32 


THE  ADVENT  OF  CHRIST  33 

in  human  nature; — may  we  not  say  still 
more  in  the  Divine  nature. 

Progressive  revelation  is  the  subjective  as- 
pect of  human  progress.  The  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution —  evolution  of  capacity  for  knowledge 
—  is  profoundly  true  with  respect  to  the  spirit 
of  man;  there  is  nothing  artificial  about  our 
ignorance ;  facts  are  not  withheld  from  us,  any 
more  than  a  picture,  a  statue,  or  an  oratorio  is 
kept  from  the  cognizance  of  an  animal, —  every- 
thing lies  before  it,  ready  to  be  seen  or  heard, 
• — only  the  perception  is  lacking.  In  the 
divinest  creation  of  man  such  creatures  see 
absolutely  nothing;  nothing  can  they  appre- 
ciate of  the  spirit,  the  idea,  the  inspiration, 
incarnate  in  a  work  of  genius. 

And  even  so  it  must  be  with  the  most  en- 
lightened man,  confronted  with  the  creations  of 
God. 

The  idea  of  '  angels  '  is  usually  treated  as 
fanciful.  Imaginative  it  is,  but  not  altogether 
fanciful;  and  though  the  physical  appearance 
and  attributes  of  such  imaginary  beings  may 
have  been  over-emphasized  or  misconceived,  yet 
facts  known  to  me  indicate  that  we  are  not 


34  INCARNATION 

really  lonely  in  our  struggle,  that  our  destiny 
is  not  left  to  haphazard,  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  laissez  faire  in  a  highly  organised  uni- 
yerse.  Help  may  be  rejected,  but  help  is  avail- 
able; a  ministry  of  benevolences  surrounds  us 
' — a  cloud  of  witnesses — not  witnesses  only 
but  helpers,  agents  like  ourselves  of  the  im- 
manent God. 

Hidden  as  they  are  to  our  present  senses, 
poets  can  realise  their  presence  in  moments  of 
insight,  can  become  aware  of  their  assistance 
in  periods  of  dejection  —  dejection  which  else 
would  be  despair.  So  it  has  been  with  one  and 
another  of  the  band  of  poets  who,  stranded  and 
unknown  in  a  great  city,  have  felt  the  sting  of 
poverty;  to  them  at  times  have  the  heavens 
opened,  the  every-day  surroundings  have  be- 
come transfigured, —  as  Cheapside  was,  in 
Wordsworth's  poem,  at  the  song  of  the  thrush, 
■ — and,  to  the  vision  of  Francis  Thompson, 
angels  have  ascended  and  descended  in  the  very 
streets  of  London :  — 

'But  (when  so  sad  thou  canst  not  sadder) 
Cry;  —  and  upon  thy  sore  loss 
Shall  shine  the  traffic  of  Jacob's  ladder 
Pitched  between  Heaven  and  Charing  Cross.' 


THE  ADVENT  OP  CHRIST  35 

And  the  race  also  has  been  helped.  A 
Divine  Helper  has  actually  taken  flesh  and  dwelt 
among  us, —  full  of  grace  and  truth.  *  The 
second  man  is  the  Lord  from  heaven.'  And 
at  this  Advent  season  and  Christmas  time  we 
commemorate  that  event.  We  commemorate  it 
every  time  we  date  a  letter ;  for  what  does  1910 
mean  except  that  we  are  counting  the  years 
since  that  event?  The  whole  Christian  world 
dates  its  history  from  that  momentous  epoch, 
the  Incarnation. 

We  are  all  incarnations,  all  sons  of  God  in 
a  sense,  but  at  that  epoch  a  Son  of  God  in 
the  supremest  sense  took  pity  on  the  race,  laid 
aside  his  majesty,  made  himself  of  no  reputa- 
tion, took  upon  him  the  form  of  a  servant,  a 
minister,  entered  into  our  flesh  and  lived  on 
the  planet  as  a  peasant,  a  teacher,  a  reformer, 
a  martyr.  This  is  said  to  have  literally 
happened;  and  as  a  student  of  science  I  am 
bound  to  say  that,  so  far  as  we  can  under- 
stand such  an  assertion,  there  is  nothing  in  it 
contrary  to  accepted  knowledge.  I  am  not 
testifying  to  it  because  it  is  a  conventional  be- 
lief, I  am  testifying  because  I  have  gradually 
found  that  it  may  be  true  —  because  I  have 


36  INCARNATION 

gradually  become  assured  of  the  possibility  of 
such  an  incarnation.  The  historical  testimony 
in  its  favour  is  entirely  credible.  The  Chris- 
tian Churches  have  hold  of  a  great  truth. 
That  is  what  I  want  people  to  realize  distinctly 
and  forcibly  and  without  any  convention. 
Freed  if  possible  from  the  blinkers  of  custom, 
it  can  be  recognized  as  a  reality.  All  that  the 
churches  say  about  it  need  not  be  true  —  is 
not  all  likely  to  be  true ;  but  something  is  true 
much  better  than  they  say  —  something  which 
they  and  we  together  are  gradually  rising  to  un- 
derstand. It  is  a  great  subject,  on  which  many 
scholars  have  written ;  and  what  they  have  said 
is  well  deserving  of  study.  We  should  take 
their  writings  seriously,  but  first  we  should  be 
assured  of  the  possibility  of  the  solid  fact  with 
which  they  are  dealing, —  assured  that  there 
is  a  fundamental  truth  underlying  the  tenta- 
tive conclusions  of  reverent  and  studious  men. 

Christ  did  not  spring  into  existence  as  the 
man  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  The  Christ  spirit  ex- 
isted through  all  eternity.  At  birth  he  became 
incarnate.  Then  it  was  that  he  assumed  his 
chosen  title  '  Son  of  Man.'    Before  that  he  is 


THE  ADVENT  OF  CHRIST  37 

called  the  Companion,  the  Counsellor,  the  Word 
of  God. 

The  Word,  or  the  Thought,  or  the  Logos,  the 
Idea,  the  Design,  the  Conception, —  these  words 
all  help  to  convey  some  notion  of  what  is  in- 
tended. 

Everything  created,  even  by  man,  is  pre- 
ceded by  conception,  by  thought,  by  design ;  and 
then  the  thought  is  embodied  and  made  a  phys- 
ical reality. 

A  cathedral  or  any  other  work  of  art  exists 
first  in  the  mind,  and  is  then  uttered  in  in- 
carnate form. 

So  is  it  with  every  great  work,  it  originates 
as  a  conception  —  conceived  as  we  may  say^ — 
so  it  be  magnificent  enough  —  conceived  by 
the  Holy  Ghost. 

'And  so  the  Word  had  breath,  and  wrought 
With  human  hands  the  creed  of  creeds 
In  loveliness  of  perfect  deeds 
More  strong  than  all  poetic  thought.' 

On  the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation  we  need 
not  speculate,  and  what  he  was  before  the  In- 
carnation we  can  hardly  express.  The  best  at- 
tempt that  has  been  made  to  express  it  conveys 


38  INCARNATION 

the  idea  in  mystical  and  very  beautiful  lan- 
guage with  which  we  are  all  familiar:  modu- 
lating the  great  creation  theme  — *  In  the  begin- 
ning God  created  the  heaven  and  the  earth. 
And  the  Spirit  of  God  moved  upon  the  face  of 
the  waters  ' — into  poetic  utterance  still  more 
magnificent :  — 

'In  the  beginning  was  the  Word,  and  the  Word  was 
with  God,  and  the  Word  was  God.  All  things  were  made 
by  him;  and  without  him  was  not  anything  made  that  was 
made.  .  .  . 

*And  the  Word  was  made  flesh,  and  dwelt  among  us, 
and  we  beheld  his  glory,  the  glory  as  of  the  only  begotten 
of  the  Father,  full  of  grace  and  truth.' 

Yes,  that  is  as  near  as  we  can  get  to  the 
extraordinary  truth!  The  Great  Spirit  took 
pity  on  the  human  race,  which  was  blundering 
along,  afflicted  with  a  terrible  burden  of  sins, 
with  mistaken  notions  of  worship, —  bloody 
sacrifices,  burnt  offerings,  and  all  the  machin- 
ery of  priestcraft,  even  when  it  did  not  fall 
into  idolatry.  Called  as  it  was  to  something 
better  and  higher  and  purer  from  time  to  time 
by  the  great  prophets  which  arose,  it  was  still 
terribly  mistaken,  still  confused  by  hopelessly 
wrong  ideas  of  the  nature  of  God,  and  liable  to 


THE  ADVENT  OF  CHRIST  39 

attribute  to  the  Deity  all  manner  of  human 
weaknesses  and  imperfections.  That  was  the 
condition  of  unregenerate  man.  So  a  Divine 
Spirit  — '  the  Lord  from  heaven  ' —  became  in- 
carnate, in  order  to  reveal  to  us  the  hidden 
nature  of  God, —  the  love,  the  pity,  the  long- 
suffering,  the  kindness  —  all  that  we  had 
missed  or  misconceived  or  that  priests  had  de- 
faced. He  came  to  tell  us  what  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  was  really  like.  In  many  parables 
he  tried  to  make  it  clear  to  us.  He  found  it 
no  easy  task,  but  it  was  his  central  message, 
his  constant  endeavour,  to  convey  some  sense 
of  the  reality  and  meaning  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven,  and  how  it  might  be  actually  realized 
on  earth.  .We  see  now  that  if  the  human  will 
could  only  get  into  harmony  with  the  Divine 
will,  if  the  will  of  God  could  be  done  on  earth 
as  it  is  done  in  heaven,  the  Kingdom  would 
have  come;  earth  and  heaven  would  have  be- 
come one,  and  the  joy  of  existence  would  be 
supreme. 

This  vision  —  the  hope  of  this  millennium 
—  has  been  the  inspiration  ever  since  of  saints 
and  apostles;  who  with  good  cause  have  la- 
mented   the    pathetic    blindness    of    previous 


40  INCARNATION 

generations,  the  determined  blindness  of  their 
own:  — 

'  Lo  for  the  dawn,  (and  wherefore  wouldst  thou  screen  it?) 

Lo  with  what  eyes,  how  eager  and  alone, 
Seers  for  the  sight  have  spent  themselves,  nor  seen  it, 
Kings  for  the  knowledge,  and  they  have  not  known.' 

Our  spiritual  eyes  are  still  closed,  even  now. 
Life  on  this  planet  is  as  yet  far  from  the  re- 
alization of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven;  the 
misery  and  the  inequalities  of  opportunity  are 
too  prevailing,  the  man-made  degradations  too 
severe.  We  are  still  barely  emerged  from  the 
savagery  of  ruthless  competition ;  the  condition 
of  the  stricken  poor  is  too  appalling.  *  The 
earth  is  full  of  darkness  and  cruel  habitations.* 

But  it  is  our  own  fault,  it  is  not  the  fault  of 
nature,  there  is  room  and  plenty  for  all,  under 
proper  organisation;  and  the  earth  is  bright 
—  as  bright  as  any  other  of  the  heavenly 
bodies.  If  it  seems  dark  it  is  our  own  fault. 
*  Dark  is  the  world  to  thee,  thyself  art  the  rea- 
son why!  '  But  hope  is  in  the  air.  In  spite 
of  prevalent  greed  and  selfishness  —  greed  and 
selfishness  so  stupid  that  they  defeat  their  own 
ends,  and  spoil  life  for  all  but  the  absolutely 


THE  ADVENT  OF  CHRIST  41 

inhuman, —  thoughtful  people  are  beginning  to 
perceive  how  deep  has  been  this  corporate 
folly;  more  and  more  are  they  longing  for  a 
brighter  day. 

Civilized  humanity  should  be  raised  above 
mere  material  animal  distress ;  —  little  more  is 
needed  for  its  reformation;  there  are  plenty  of 
social  forces  which  make  for  good,  if  they  had  a 
chance  of  acting,  if  they  were  not  too  heavily 
handicapped, —  humanity  itself  is  good  enough, 
if  given  a  chance.  Real  badness  is  excep- 
tional; weakness,  increased  by  hopelessness,  is 
the  besetting  sin.  But  reformers  and  drama- 
tists are  busy,  people  are  waking  up,  there  is 
hope  in  the  air.  Even  now  the  seers  and  poets 
are  preparing  their  songs  to  welcome  a  second 
Advent  of  the  Divine  Spirit  in  the  hearts  of 
men, —  not  in  Palestine  or  Asia  Minor,  but  here 
in  Europe,  in  Britain,  in  London :  the  time  will 
surely  come  when  we  can  feel  that  the  further 
dream  of  the  poet  has  been  realised, — 

'And  lo,  Christ  walking  on  the  water 
Not  of  Gennesareth,  but  Thames ! ' 


CHAPTEE  VI 

PEOGRESS  AND  SUFFERING  AND  FUTURE  SERVICE 

MUCH  have  we  to  go  through  before  that 
consummation, —  much  pain  and  sorrow 
and  trouble,  as  well  as  happiness  and  joy: 

*  No  sudden  heaven,  nor  sudden  hell,  for  man/ 

Nor  will  it  greatly  matter  that  we  ourselves 
shall  have  passed  on  into  another  condition  of 
existence.  However  we  may  progress,  we 
shall  not  be  immune  from  the  sufferings  of 
earth.  Now  that  we  have  become  part  of  hu- 
manity, we  shall  not  be  able  —  we  shall  not 
wish  —  to  leave  it  untended,  or  to  ignore  its 
tears  and  entreaties.  "We  shall  either  continue 
part  of  the  redeeming  agency,  or  we  shall  still 
need  redemption  ourselves.  Then,  as  now,  it 
will  be  true  that 

'  The  Voices  of  the  day 
Are  heard  across  the  Voices  of  the  dark' ; 

then,  as  now,  it  will  be  true  that  willingness  to 

42 


PROGRESS  AND  SUFFERING  43 

help  distress  is  a  mark,  not  of  '  humanity  ' 
only,  but  of  our  highest  conception  of  Divinity 
also. 

It  was  the  inspiration  of  this  idea  that  thrilled 
through  the  youthful  David  in  Browning's 
poem  '  Saul,'  when  in  a  burst  of  affection  for 
his  afflicted  master  he  caught  a  glimpse  of  the 
Divine  scheme  of  salvation  —  realizing  that  his 
own  willingness  to  share  the  pain  of  another 
was  a  feeble  echo  of  the  love  of  God  —  and  in 
the  enthusiasm  of  that  discovery  gave  utterance 
to  that  rapturous  exclamation,  the  climax  of  the 
poem :  — 

'Would  I  suffer  for  him  that  I  love?     So  wouldst  thou — 

so  wilt  thou  I 
So   shall   crown   thee   the   topmost,   ineffablest,   uttermost 

crown  — 
And  thy  love  fill  infinitude  wholly,  nor  leave  up  nor  down 
One  spot  for  the  creature  to  stand  in !     It  is  by  no  breath, 
Turn  of  eye,  wave  of  hand,  that  salvation  joins  issue  with 

death ! 
As  thy  Love  is  discovered  almighty,  almighty  be  proved 
Thy  power,  that  exists  with  and  for  it,  of  being  Beloved! 
He  who  did  most,  shall  bear  most ;  the  strongest  shall  stand 

the  most  weak. 
'Tis  the  weakness  in  strength,  that  I  cry  for!  my  flesh, 

that  I  seek 


44  INCARNATION 

In  the  Godhead!    I  seek  and  I  find  it.     0  Saul,  it  shall 

be 
A  Face  like  my  face  that  receives  thee;  a  Man  like  to  me, 
Thou  shalt  love  and  be  loved  by,  for  ever:  a  Hand  like 

this  hand 
Shall  throw  open  the  gates  of  new  life  to  thee!     See  the 

Christ  stand ! ' 

This  mighty  idea  of  suffering  borne  by  the 
Divine  Being  for  the  sake  and  the  help  of 
humanity  thrilled  through  Browning  himself,  as 
he  thus  gave  dramatic  expression  to  it;  for  in 
the  immediately  following  stanzas  he  describes 
the  drop  back  into  ordinary  life,  as  of  one  who 
has  wakened  from  an  unearthly  vision; — a 
feeling  well  known  to  all  who  have  ever  been  on 
the  heights  of  thought. 

People  often  appear  to  think,  or  at  any  rate 
to  sing,  that  they  will  get  through  all  their  pain 
and  exertion  here,  and  hereafter  will  be  sur- 
feited with  idleness  and  enjoyment.  True  it  is 
that  for  the  over-worked  and  harassed  multi- 
tudes some  rest  is  profoundly  needful.  Sea- 
sonable rest  and  peace  and  leisure  are  essential 
to  the  fair  development  of  the  soul;  they  are 
necessary  conditions  for  thought,  for  discovery, 
for  meditation,  for  the  fruits  of  genius,  for 


PROGRESS  AND  SUFFERING  45 

many  of  the  higher  attributes  of  man.  Too 
little  of  these  good  things  are  enjoyed  here; 
even  holidays,  for  the  multitude,  are  a  crowded 
and  good-natured  effort  at  wearisome  festivity. 
But  rest  and  peace  and  leisure  are  very  dif- 
ferent from  idleness. 

And  hereafter,  idleness  would  be  absurd. 
After  a  few  thousand  years  the  monotony 
would  be  unendurable;  in  any  condition  of  be- 
ing, stagnation  must  be  deadly,  the  soul  must 
continue  to  rise,  to  advance,  to  exert  herself. 
For  instance,  we  may  have  noticed  how  the 
instinct  for  study  and  enlightenment  continues 
into  old  age,  in  the  assurance,  apparently,  that 
work  so  expended  involves  no  waste  of  time. 
*  Every  hour  is  saved  ...  a  bringer  of 
new  things  '  ; 

'And  this  gray  spirit  yearning  in  desire 
To  follow  knowledge  like  a  sinking  star, 
Beyond  the  utmost  bound  of  human  thought.* 

Let  no  complaint  be  made  that  anticipation  of 
future  exertion  is  painful.  Work  done  against 
the  grain,  or  under  compulsion,  is  dreary;  but 
work  undertaken  with  enthusiasm  is  a  delight. 
Everything  depends  on  the  conditions  and  the 


46  INCARNATION 

motive.  The  work  of  a  galley-slave  at  the  oar 
must  have  been  intolerable ;  but  that  of  an  ath- 
lete in  a  boat-race  is  voluntarily  undertaken. 
Twenty  minutes  on  the  treadmill,  I  have  been 
told,  is  a  sort  of  torture;  but  to  a  youth  on  a 
bicycle  the  labour  becomes  enjoyment.  Nor  is 
there  any  permanent  happiness  to  be  obtained 
without  work  and  service  of  some  kind.  The 
noble  and  passionate  soul  can  be  no  more  satis- 
fied with  luxury  than  with  sloth  — 

'  Nay,  but  she  aims  not  at  glory,  no  lover  of  glory  shs : 
Give  her  the  glory  of  going  on,  and  still  to  be.* 

'  She  desires  no  isles  of  the  blest,  no  quiet  seats  of  the  just, 
To  rest  in  a  golden  grove,  or  to  bask  in  a  summer  sky: 
Give  her  the  wages  of  going  on,  and  not  to  die.* 

Such  is  the  demand  of  every  vigorous  nature ; 
its  own  force  urges  it  on 

'  To  strive,  to  seek,  to  find,  and  not  to  yield.' 

Under  the  figure  of  a  weapon,  Ulysses  is  pic- 
tured by  Tennyson  as  lamenting  the  inactivity 
of  old  age  — 

'  How  dull  it  is  to  pause,  to  make  an  end. 
To  rust  unbumish'd,  not  to  shine  in  use !  * 


PROGRESS  AND  SUFFERING  47 

And  just  as  the  strenuous  healthy  man,  here 
and  now,  asks  for  danger  and  privation  —  is 
ready  to  face  severe  privation,  as  in  Antarctic 
exploration,  rather  than  inertia, —  so  is  it  with 
the  amhition  and  petition  of  the  soul :  — 

'  Oh  roughly,  strongly,  work  her  bold  increase  I 
Leave  her  not  stagnant  in  a  painless  peace! 
Nor  let  her,  lulled  in  howso  heavenly  air, 
Fold  her  brave  pinions  and  forget  to  dare !  * 

So  it  has  always  been ;  —  grief  and  pain  have 
been  essential  ingredients  in  the  constitution  of 
humanity,  from  the  earliest  dawn  of  sentient 
things :  — 

*  Before  the  beginning  of  years 
There  came  to  the  making  of  man, 
Time  with  a  gift  of  tears, 
Grief  with  a  glass  that  ran. 
Pleasure  with  pain  for  leaven, 
Summer  with  flowers  that  fell. 
Remembrance  fallen  from  heaven, 
And  madness  risen  from  hell.' 

Ay,  human  nature  is  a  full  and  complex  thing, 
of  a  vast  potentiality, —  seamed  and  furrowed 
from  the  past,  but  with  sensibilities  indicative 
of  a  mighty  future. 

'Already  the  Artist,  the  Poet,  and  the  Thinker, 


48  INCARNATION 

devoting  themselves  whole-heartedly  to  work, 
and  embodying  such  beatific  glimpses  as  they 
catch  in  moments  of  inspiration,  are  able  to 
produce  works  which  are  veritable  creations: 
being  rightly  so  called,  inasmuch  as  structure 
and  order  and  beauty  are  made  to  arise  out  of  a 
material  chaos.  Their  spirits  do  in  truth  brood 
over  matter  without  form  and  voidj  till  they 
coerce  it  to  their  design  and  incarnate  in  it 
their  thought.  Such  work,  at  the  highest  level, 
contains  in  itself  an  exceeding  great  reward; 
even  though  it  may  involve  the  creator  in  trou- 
ble and  conflict  with  the  obstruction  and  ugli- 
ness around. 

Thus  we  are  justified  in  speculating  beyond 
actual  experience,  and  in  assuming,  with  good 
reason,  that  creative  work  —  with  all  that  it 
may  entail  —  will  ultimately  form  part  of  the 
highest  joy;  and  that  lofty  spirits,  inspired  by 
a  supernal  Vision,  and  refreshed  by  periods  of 
sabbatical  calm,  will  enter  upon  their  task  with 
sublime  devotion. 

*  Such  devotion,'  says  Myers,  *  may  find  its 
flower  in  no  vain  self-martyrdom,  no  cloistered 
resignation,  but  rather  in  such  pervading  ec- 
gtasj'  as  already  the  elect  have  known;  the 


PROGRESS  AND  SUFFERING  49 

Vision  which  dissolves  for  a  moment  the  cor- 
poreal prison-house;  "  the  flight  of  the  One  to 
the  One."  ' 

And,  with  this  phrase  of  the  inspired  Ploti- 
nus,  he  goes  on  to  quote  the  eloquent  and  mem- 
orable passage  which  I  venture  here  also  to 
transcribe  for  its  own  sake :  — 

*  So  let  the  soul  that  is  not  unworthy  of  that  Vision  con- 
template the  Great  Soul;  freed  from  deceit  and  every 
witchery,  and  collected  into  calm.  Calmed  be  the  body 
for  her  in  that  hour,  and  the  tumult  of  the  flesh;  ay,  all 
that  is  about  her,  calm;  calm  be  the  earth,  the  sea,  the  air, 
and  let  Heaven  itself  be  still.  Then  let  her  feel  how  into 
that  silent  heaven  the  Great  Soul  floweth  in  .  .  .  And  so 
may  man's  soul  be  sure  of  Vision,  when  suddenly  she  is 
filled  with  light.  .  .  .  And  how  may  this  thing  be  for  usf 
Let  all  else  go.' 

The  atmosphere  of  calm  and  peace,  both 
mental  and  physical,  thus  beautifully  described, 
furnishes  by  universal  consent  the  opportunity 
or  condition  for  the  highest  vision,  this  is  the 
condition  to  which  we  hurried  and  time-driven 
mortals  so  seldom  attain  —  this  the  state  in 
which  inspirations  come. 

'  They  haunt  the  silence  of  the  breast, 
'Imaginations  calm  and  fail-, 


50  INCARNATION 

The  memory  like  a  cloudless  air, 
The  conscience  as  a  sea  at  rest/ 

The  uproar  of  physical  life  is  upon  us  and 
deafens  us ;  calm  is  necessary  for  revelation ;  — 
not  till  the  earthquake  and  the  fire  have  sub- 
sided can  we  hear  the  still  small  voice. 

Nor  perhaps  would  it  be  good  for  us  too  fre- 
quently to  indulge  in  retrospect,  nor  too  con- 
stantly to  dwell  in  anticipation  of  the  future; 
we  have  duties  to  perform,  we  must  learn  to 
overcome  anxiety,  but  to  overcome  obstacles 
also,  and  to  do  each  his  heaven-sent  work. 


'> 


*  The  path  we  came  by,  thorn  and  flower, 
Is  shadowed  by  the  growing  hour, 
Lest  life  should  fail  in  looking  back.' 

So  both  past  and  future  are  dimly  known, 
and  our  lives  are  not  suffused  with  peace.  In 
times  of  refreshment  some  foretaste  of  the 
peace  of  God  may  envelop  us  for  a  moment, 
and  with  it  may  come  inspiration,  but  only  to 
arouse  in  us  fresh  energy,  more  devoted  service. 
Truly  the  peace  of  God  passes  all  understand- 
ing; it  is  not  a  thing  easily  attained,  it  is  very 
different  from  mere  rest;  it  is  restfulness,  but 
it  is  not  rest.    Nor  can  it  ever  be  a  folding  of 


PROGRESS  AND  SUFFERING  51 

the  hands  in  satisfaction  with  what  has  been 
accomplished.  Still  may  we  be  called  upon  '  to 
fill  up  what  is  behind  '  ;  always  there  will  be 
something  still  to  be  done,  and  not  solely  to  be 
enjoyed. 

We  shall  find,  then,  as  we  rise  in  the  scale  of 
existence,  that  not  only  calm  will  come  to  us, 
but  work  too,  and  sometimes  pain ;  we  shall  find 
ourselves  —  strange  to  say  —  sometimes  actu- 
ally choosing  pain  and  trouble  rather  than  com- 
fort and  ease.  The  highest  kind  of  pain  is 
voluntary  —  it  is  suffered  for  a  '  cause,'  or  for 
the  sake  of  others. 

This  condition,  the  possibility  of  this  sum- 
mons, will  not  cease ;  we  shall  always  be  liable, 
even  at  the  highest,  to  choose  vicarious  suffer- 
ing; we  shall  willingly  sacrifice  our  pleasures 
for  a  good  cause. 

The  most  ideal  joy  is  found  in  service.  It 
is  the  keynote  of  existence, — •  service  both  now 
and  hereafter,  service  in  the  highest, —  this  is 
what  is  meant  by  *  the  Joy  of  the  Lord. '  The 
fact  comes  out  clearly  in  the  parable  of  the 
Talents.  Those  who  had  done  well  with  what 
was  entrusted  to  them,  who  had  utilized  their 
opportunities  for  useful  service,  were  told, — 


52  INCAENATION 

what?  Not  that  they  are  to  rest  from  their 
labours,  not  that  '  now  the  labourer's  task  is 
o'er  '  ;  no,  they  were  told  that  having  been 
faithful  in  a  few  things  they  would  be  made 
rulers  over  many  things  —  rulers,  in  one  ver- 
sion '  over  ten  cities  '  (as  an  expansion  from 
a  trusteeship  of  '  ten  pounds  ') —  and  so  be  per- 
mitted to  enter  into  '  the  joy  of  their  lord.' 
This  is  the  Kingdom  prepared  for  them  '  from 
the  foundation  of  the  world.'  No  mere  peace 
for  them  in  that,  but  strenuous  exertion. 

Something  of  the  spirit  of  the  worker  must 
enter  into  and  permeate  the  work,  if  it  is  to 
be  noble  and  worthy.  Nothing  worth  doing  is 
accomplished  without  trouble  and  *  taking 
pains.'  Up  to  the  Highest  this  is  so.  How 
comes  it  that  the  Deity  has  made  all  these 
worlds,  and  filled  some  of  them  with  self-willed 
people,  if  he  only  needs  rest  and  peace?  The 
complications  of  existence  must  surely  entail 
trouble  —  trouble  and  actual  sacrifice  and  real 
pain.    All  creation  had  surely  been 

'A  beauty  with  defect  —  till  that  which  knows, 
And  is  not  known,  but  felt  thro'  what  we  feel 
Within  ourselves  is  highest,  shall  descend 


PROGRESS  AND  SUFFERING     53 

On  this  half-deed,  and  shape  it  at  the  last 
According  to  the  Highest  in  the  Highest.* 

Let  us  never  think  that  existence  is  a  placid 
stream  down  which  we  may  glide  without  ad- 
ventures. For  a  time  we  may,  while  character 
is  maturing,  while  opportunity  for  thought  and 
for  development  is  needed ;  but  there  will  come 
a  time  when  sacrifice  is  demanded,  when  some 
urgent  call  is  made  upon  our  nature,  and  when 
a  man  feels  that  he  has  to  respond.  This  is 
the  case  with  all  heroes, —  witness  the  launching 
of  a  lifeboat  in  a  storm,  witness  the  rescue 
party  in  a  colliery  disaster,  a  fireman  saving 
life  at  the  expense  of  his  own,  physicians  and 
nurses  in  times  of  plague  or  war.  At  all  times 
of  stress  men  and  noble  women  respond  to  the 
call,  or  feel  degraded.  Danger  has  to  be  faced, 
and  our  manhood  rises  to  it.  And  this  liability 
may  surely  continue  throughout  eternity. 

*  Say,  could  aught  else  content  thee  ?  which  were  best, 
After  so  brief  a  battle  an  endless  rest, 
Or  the  ancient  conflict  rather  to  renew, 
By  the  old  deeds  strengthened  mightier  deeds  to  do, 
Till  all  thou  art,  nay,  all  thou  hast  dreamed  to  be 
Proves  thy  mere  root  or  embryon  germ  of  thee ;  — 


54  INCARNATION 

Wherefrom  thy  great  life  passionately  springs, 
Rocked  by  strange  blasts  and  stormy  tempestings, 
Yet  still  from  shock  and  storm  more  steadfast  grown, 
More  one  with  other  souls,  yet  more  thine  own. 
Nay,  thro'  those  sufferings  called  and  chosen  then 
A  very  Demiurge  of  unborn  men, — 
A  very  Saviour,  bending  half  divine 
To  souls  who  feel  such  woes  as  once  were  thine;  — ■ 
For  these,  perchance,  some  utmost  fear  to  brave, 
Teach  with  thy  truth,  and  with  thy  sorrows  save.' 


CHAPTER  Vn 

THE   BEVELATION   OF   CHRIST 

THE  possibility  that  an  opportunity  for 
painful  service  will  be  liable  to  test  our 
allegiance  and  claim  our  voluntary  submission 
hereafter,  no  matter  bow  high  we  may 
rise  in  the  scale  of  existence,  is  a  solem- 
nizing, may  be  an  alarming  thought,  but  it  is 
proven  by  our  highest  example  —  it  is  the  very 
spirit  of  Christ.  He  at  his  lofty  altitude  saw 
an  opportunity  for  helping  the  human  race. 
He  doubtless  foresaw  the  consequences,  the  re- 
jection, the  scorn,  the  suffering,  yea,  the 
scourging  and  the  death ;  but  he  did  not  shrink. 
He  too,  if  we  may  say  so,  rose  to  the  occasion 
(yes,  even  to  him  it  is  an  added  glory),  and  he 
became  incarnate.  He  lived  the  life  of  a  peas- 
ant, with  all  the  disabilities  of  a  working  man, 
and  he  suffered  death  by  torture.  The  life  was 
lived  out  fair  to  the  bitter  end, —  to  the  appar- 

55 


66  INCARNATION 

ent  defeat,  down  to  the  last  despairing  cry  *  My 
God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me  I  ' 

A  quotation?  Yes,  but  an  adopted  quota- 
tion, and  in  its  new  significance  quite  the  most 
awful  utterance  of  man. 

*  Nay  but  thou  knewest  us,  Lord  Christ  thou  knowest, 

Well  thou  rememberest  our  feeble  frame, 
Thou  canst  conceive  our  highest  and  our  lowest, 
Pulses  of  nobleness  and  aches  of  shame.' 

*  This  hath  he  done  and  shall  we  not  adore  himf 

This  shall  he  do  and  can  we  still  despair? 
Come  let  us  quickly  fling  ourselves  before  him, 
Cast  at  his  feet  the  burthen  of  our  care.' 

While  incarnate  he  too  had  in  some  real  sensei 
partially  forgotten  previous  existence.  Yet  of 
him  pre-eminently  it  may  be  said  that  not  in 
entire  forgetfulness,  but  trailing  clouds  of  glory 
did  he  come,  from  God  who  was  his  home. 

We  can  see  that  his  divine  ancestry  must 
have  become  intermittently  plain,  to  one  after 
another  of  those  with  whom  he  came  into  con- 
tact as  he  walked  the  earth  in  Syria.  An  ex- 
traordinary influence,  an  effulgence  of  the 
spirit,  shone  through  the  earthly  covering  and 
inspired  profound  wonder,  enthusiasm,  and  de- 


THE  REVELATION  OF  CHRIST  57 

votion.  The  healing  influence  of  the  hem  of  his 
garment  is  not  beyond  what  we  know  may 
occur.  And  the  Transfiguration  itself,  when 
even  his  peasant  garments  shared  for  a  moment 
in  the  blaze  of  glory,  was  but  a  special  mani- 
festation, to  the  few  who  were  susceptible,  of 
what  was  more  obscurely  there  all  the  time. 

Such  luminosity  as  we  possess  is  effectually 
hidden  in  '  earthen  vessels,'  but  the  light  that 
then  shone  out  of  darkness  gave  what  St.  Paul 
calls  '  the  illumination  of  the  knowledge  of  the 
glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ. ' 

*  Oh  to  have  watched  thee  thro'  the  vmeyards  wander, 
Pluck  the  ripe  ears,  and  into  evening  roam !  — 
Followed,  and  known  that  in  the  twilight  yonder 
Legions  of  angels  shone  about  thy  home ! ' 

He  remembered  more  than  we  do,  and  he 
told  us.  Reminiscences  must  have  come  over 
him  from  time  to  time, —  must  have  flooded  his 
spirit, —  as  in  a  minor  degree  is  the  experience 
of  men  of  genius.  Inspirations  came  to  him 
from  time  to  time  throughout  his  ministry, — 
*  All  things  that  I  have  heard  of  my  Father  I 
have  made  known  unto  you.'  He  told  us  more 
than  we  could  then  receive.  He  that  had  ears 
to  hear  had  then  a  chance  of  hearing. 


58  INCARNATION 

'  God,  who  at  sundry  times  and  in  divers  manners  spake 
in  time  past  unto  the  fathers  by  the  prophets,  hath  in 
these  last  days  spoken  unto  us  by  his  Son.' 

So  it  is  to-day.  A  record  —  sliort  it  is  true, 
but  a  sufficient  record  —  has  been  preserved, 
has  been  made  available  to  us  here  in  modern 
England  through  the  loving  labours  of  scholars ; 
and  it  rests  with  us  whether  we  can  under- 
stand it. 

From  the  record  it  appears  that  the  memory, 
the  consciousness,  of  what  he  was  and  why  he 
had  come,  what  was  the  meaning  of  his  life  and 
what  was  expected  of  him,  or  rather  what  he 
himself  had  determined  to  do,  seemed  gradually 
to  dawn  upon  him. 

His  insight  grew  with  maturity;  he  spent 
thirty  years  in  quiet  village  existence;  he  went 
through  much  study,  through  long  silent 
.thought  and  periods  of  strange  stress,  before 
he  fully  realized  his  mission  —  the  mission 
which  in  another  state  he  had  solemnly  under- 
taken. And  at  the  climax  of  this  period,  after 
his  baptism  by  John,  he  spent  forty  days  in  the 
wilderness  —  a  time  of  silent  brooding.  And 
here  it  was  that  he  went  through  that  mysteri- 
ous experience  which  he  called  being  tempted 


THE  KEVELATION  OF  CHRIST  59 

of  the  devil  —  an  experience  of  which  he  must 
have  told  something  to  some  of  his  disciples, 
and  which  they  doubtless  only  half,  or  less  than 
half,  understood.  He  studied  the  Scriptures 
also.  He  found  many  passages  in  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  —  notably  in  the  great  prophet 
Isaiah  —  which  he  adopted  as  applying  to  him- 
self and  his  mission.  And  at  last  he  emerged 
from  obscurity,  and  in  his  own  native  place 
stood  up  in  the  church  and  announced  that 
hereafter  he  was  no  longer  the  village  carpen- 
ter, the  mere  son  of  Joseph,  the  man  with  whom 
they  were  familiar,  but  a  Prophet,  a  Messiah, 
the  visible  incarnation  of  a  Being  of  magnitude 
far  higher  than  they  had  ever  known :  one  who 
should  succour  humanity,  should  help  those  in 
distress,  should  show  men  how  to  succour  each 
other, —  a  Being  full  of  inspiration  and  insight, 
who  should  take  of  the  things  of  God  and  reveal 
them  unto  man. 

A  dramatic  episode  this,  when  he  read  that 
verse  from  Isaiah  in  the  church  of  his  native 
village,  stopping  sort  in  the  middle  of  a  sen- 
tence,—  not  completing  it,  because  he  had  not 
come  to  proclaim  God's  '  day  of  vengeance.' 
That  might  lie  in  the  future.    That,  as  it  hung 


60  INCARNATION 

over  Jerusalem,  he,  later  on,  foresaw.  But  now 
his  mission,  his  special  God-anointed  mission, 
was  *  to  heal  the  broken-hearted,  to  preach  de- 
liverance to  the  captives,  and  recovering  of 
sight  to  the  blind,  to  set  at  liberty  them  that 
are  bruised,  to  proclaim  the  acceptable  year  of 
the  Lord.'  Now  was  the  accepted  time,  now 
the  day  of  salvation. 

*  And  he  closed  the  book,  and  gave  it  again 
to  the  minister,  and  sat  down.  And  the  eyes 
of  all  them  that  were  in  the  synagogue  were 
fastened  upon  him.*  No  wonder!  They  knew 
the  Scriptures  well  enough.  They  were  struck 
with  the  sudden  cessation,  the  breaking  off  in 
the  middle  of  a  sentence  —  astonished  at  the 
inspired  and  authoritative  manner  of  the  young 
man, —  still  more  when  he  spoke  again,  saying, 
*  This  day  is  this  Scripture  fulfilled  in  your 
ears.' 

They  said  one  to  another,  *  Is  not  this  Jo- 
seph's son?  '  Is  not  this  the  neighbour  we  all 
know?    How  comes  it  then  he  has  this  wisdom? 

The  sermon  as  it  went  on  not  only  surprised 
them,  it  ran  counter  to  their  prejudices,  it  of- 
fended their  national  pride  and  exasperated 
them.    The  Messiah  he  was  expounding  was 


THE  REVELATION  OF  CHRIST  61 

very  different  to  tlieir  conception  —  was  very 
far  from  a  national  deliverer ;  already  the  claim 
of  all  humanity  was  recognized,  and  not  that  of 
Israel  alone. 

So  they  were  filled  with  wrath,  and  sought 
to  hurl  the  young  preacher  over  the  nearest 
precipice.  He  escaped ;  but  if  he  had  had  any 
illusion  as  to  the  speedy  reception  of  his  mes- 
sage, this  incident  must  have  promptly  dissi- 
pated any  such  hope.  Henceforth  he  was  more 
reserved  in  his  utterance. 

That  Jesus  recognized  himself  as  the  Mes- 
siah, with  his  own  interpretation  as  to  the  mean- 
ing of  the  phrase,  is  manifest  from  that  unfor- 
gettable conversation  which  he  held  with  the 
woman  of  Samaria ;  —  testing  as  it  were  first 
his  own  power  of  clairvoyance,  explaining  to 
her  more  explicitly  than  usual  what  he  had 
come  to  do,  and  at  length  openly  declaring  in 
plain  words,  '  I  that  speak  unto  thee  am  he.' 

Later,  while  talking  confidentially  to  his  dis- 
ciples, he  gave  them  further  indications  of  his 
thoughts  concerning  the  prophecies  of  the  Old 
Testament.  In  them,  beside  their  plain  and 
temporary  significance,  he  discerned  some  fore- 
cast of  the  period  in  which  they  were  living, 


62  INCARNATION  , 

some  anticiption  of  the  exceptional  nature 
which  he  felt  to  be  his,  some  prognostication 
of  his  birth. 

Do  you  think  that  such  prophetic  anticipa- 
tion is  impossible?  Do  you  think  it  absurd  to 
suppose  that  such  an  event  as  the  Incarnation 
was  foreseen  and  heralded,  in  some  fashion 
more  or  less  distinct?  If  you  think  so  it  is  not 
to  be  wondered  at,  for  the  possibility  of  such 
foresight  into  futurity  is  a  strange  one.  But 
I  believe  you  are  wrong  if  you  think  so,  never- 
theless. Facts  are  beginning  to  be  known  to 
me,  still  obscure  and  incomplete,  which  tend  to 
show  that  even  the  birth  of  a  human  child,  of 
ordinary  parents,  a  child  only  remarkable  for 
the  fullness  and  richness  of  its  nature  and  for 
the  destiny  soon  to  overtake  it,  was  predicted, 
was  shadowed  forth  in  ways  obscure  but  sub- 
sequently unmistakable,  more  than  a  year  be- 
fore birth.  It  is  not  a  subject  on  which 
dogmatism  is  appropriate;  but  the  conclusion 
at  which  I  am  gradually  arriving  is  that  future 
events  are  planned,  and  are  not  haphazard  and 
unforeseen;  that  arrangement  is  possible  in 
other  spheres  than  ours,  just  as  design  and 
foresight  are  possible  among  human  beings, — 


THE  REVELATION  OF  CHRIST  63 

anticipation  and  heraldings  of  a  kind  far  above 
our  present  power,  it  is  true,  but  of  the  same 
general  character. 

Nor  is  the  idea  of  some  kind  of,  perhaps  auto- 
matic, perhaps  semi-conscious,  choice,  concern- 
ing our  earthly  destiny,  foreign  to  the  concep- 
tion of  inspired  and  informed  philosophers  and 
poets;  for  the  parable  in  the  tenth  book  of 
Plato's  '  Republic  '  is  well  known,  and  percep- 
tion of  some  real  truth  underlying  it  is  the  basis 
of  the  following  apostrophe  addressed  to  an 
ordinary  human  being :  — ■ 

*  Soul,  that  in  some  high  world  hast  made 
Pre-natal  imbewailing  choice, 
Thro'  earth's  perplexities  of  shade 
Sternly  to  suffer  and  rejoice.' 

But  however  it  may  be  with  the  individual 
himself  in  ordinary  cases,  it  is  practically  cer- 
tain, in  my  mind,  that  anticipation  in  such  mat- 
ters is  possible,  and  that  inspired  writers  may 
express  far  more  than  they  know. 

So  I  have  been  led  to  perceive  that  the  de- 
scription given  of  those  other  utterances  — 
Christ's  posthumous  utterances  at  the  end  of 
Luke's  Gospel  —  may  be  essentially  true,  and 
that  some  of  the  prophecies  are  genuinely  and 


64  INCARNATION 

properly  interpretable  in  ways  of  which  the 
writers  had  barely  a  suspicion:  — 

'Behoved  it  not  the  Christ  to  suffer  these  things  and  to 
enter  into  his  glory?  And  beginning  at  Moses  and  all  the 
prophets,  he  expounded  unto  them  in  all  the  Scriptures 
the  things  concerning  himself.' 

And  while  still  living,  he  was  imbued  with 
the  same  idea;  for  did  he  not  say  to  a  Jewish 
audience,  at  a  moment  of  danger  and  inspira- 
tion, 

*  Your  father  Abraham  rejoiced  to  see  my  day,  and  he 
saw  it  and  was  glad.' 

Through  the  vista  of  a  thousand  years  the 
coming  of  the  Messiah  had  been  dimly  foreseen 
by  the  great  patriarchs  at  inspired  moments. 

Then  it  was  that  in  answer  to  their  easy 
self-satisfied,  sarcastic  retort,  *  Thou  art  not 
yet  fifty  years  old,  and  hast  thou  seen  Abra- 
ham? '  he  made  that  portentous  utterance,  an- 
nouncing his  pre-existence  —  his  eternity ;  — 
then  it  was  that  he  made  the  claim  which  they 
took  for  blasphemy  —  *  Verily,  verily,  I  say 
unto  you.  Before  Abraham  was,  I  Am.  ' 
That  statement  is  clear  and  unmistakable  —  it 


THE  REVELATION  OF  CHRIST  65 

was  clear  even  to  them  —  so  clear  that  they 
could  only  reply  with  stones. 

The  present,  the  past,  and  the  future,  all  in 
some  strange  sense  indistinguishable. — Exist- 
ence one  continuous  chain,  manifested  now,  hid- 
den then,  but  real  always. —  Before  them  in 
flesh  stood  the  earthly  representation  or  incar- 
nation of  a  Being  who  henceforth  would  be 
acclaimed  by  all  Christendom  as  Eternal,  Om- 
nipresent, Divine  I  *  In  the  beginning  was  the 
iWord,  and  the  Word  was  with  God,  and  the 
Word  was  God.' 


REASON  AND  BELIEF 

PART  II 
THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  IN 
EDUCATION 

CHAPTER  I 

HINTS   ON   TEACHING 

THE  proper  utilization  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment in  teaching  is  a  problem  of  consid- 
erable difficulty,  made  none  the  easier  by  re- 
ligious controversies  and  disputes;  and  I  per- 
ceive that  it  is  still  partially  overshrouded  by 
a  darkness  due  to  superficial  methods  of  inter- 
pretation—  methods  which  are  foreign  to  all 
canons  of  literary  criticism  —  methods  which, 
though  they  used  to  be  called  orthodox,  are 
hopelessly  unscientific  and  fundamentally  mis- 
taken. 

Our  whole  outlook  on  the  Universe  has  been 
so  enlarged,  and  in  some  respects  changed, 
during  the  recent  century, —  it  is  no  wonder 
that  many  adults  feel  a  difficulty  in  understand- 
ing ancient  documents,  written  under  very  dif- 

69 


70        OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

ferent  conditions,  and  adapted  to  a  much  earlier 
period  in  the  history  of  the  human  race. 

The  difficulty,  from  the  controversial  point 
of  view,  may  be  considerable,  but  I  think  it  is 
quite  possible  to  exaggerate  the  difficulty  so 
far  as  the  immediate  dealing  with  children  is 
concerned.  I  suggest  that  the  early  parts  of 
the  Bible  are  better  adapted  to  children  than 
to  adults,  and  have  a  better  chance  of  being 
effectively  understood  by  children.  For  it  is 
well  known  that  in  youth  an  organism  passes 
in  rapid  and  partial  fashion  through  the  stages 
of  its  ancestry  —  each  individual  rapidly  re- 
tracing the  history  of  its  Eace, —  hence  a  child 
may  be  sympathetic  and  appreciative  concern- 
ing the  literature  and  history  of  early  people, 
and  whatever  was  suited  to  the  childhood  of 
the  world  may  be  appropriate  to  an  individual 
child  at  a  certain  stage  of  development. 

For  instance,  you  have  not  to  argue  a  child 
into  a  belief  in  God, —  the  belief  is  natural  and 
is  there.  So  likewise  the  Old  Testament  seems 
to  consider  it  quite  unnecessary  to  prove  or 
argue  that  God  exists :  it  feels  on  familiar  terms 
with  him,  as  a  child  does.  And  when  we  speak 
of  childish  views  of  the  Deity,  we  need  not  be 


HINTS  ON  TEACHING  71' 

understood  as  implying  a  term  of  reproach. 
None  of  our  views,  in  such  a  matter,  can  be 
much  better  than  childish ;  and  we  have  reason 
for  thinking  that  in  some  cases  they  may  be 
worse.  It  is  not  unreasonable  to  hold  that  in 
some  respects  children  may  be  nearer  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven  than  we  are,  and  may  feel  a 
greater  kinship  of  spirit  with  it  than  we  do.        ♦ 

Hence  I  feel  strongly  that  many  of  the  diffi- 
culties which  controversialists  and  Denomina- 
tionalists  make  for  themselves  are  unfelt  when 
you  come  to  deal  with  the  children  themselves. 

I  would  not,  however,  pretend  that  the  child- 
ish stage  is  higher  than  the  adult  stage,  any] 
more  than  the  Old  Testament  is  higher  than  the 
New.  Adults  who  have  really  risen  to  the  New 
Testament  stage  are  above  criticism,  but  I  fear 
that  the  majority  have  not  yet  reached  it.  Nor 
can  children  be  expected  to  have  reached  it,  they 
may  reasonably  be  regarded  as  more  in  the  Old 
Testament  stage  —  the  stage  at  which  the 
stories  related,  and  the  points  of  view  there 
taken,  seem  natural  and  interesting. 

For  teaching  purposes  the  Bible  itself  is  bet- 
ter than  Commentaries,  Creeds,  and  Cate- 
chisms.   These  belong  to  a  later  date  —  a  later 


72        OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

stage  of  evolution  —  not  necessarily  a  higher 
one.  Some  of  such  statements  are  indeed  defi- 
nitely intended  as  controversial  documents,  to 
differentiate  one  sect  from  another.  Few 
things  are  more  unchildlike  than  that. 

And  in  dealing  with  people  at  a  lower  grade 
of  civilisation,  I  should  assume  that  much  of 
what  is  true  for  children  applies  to  them  also, 
and  that  a  missionary  who  tries  to  train  Church 
converts  on  the  basis  of  Thirty-Nine  Articles, 
or  a  Westminster  Confession,  or  any  such  local 
and  temporary  document,  must  be  but  little 
qualified  for  his  work. 

As  a  rule,  therefore,  in  teaching  the  Bible,  we 
may  teach  it  to  children  quite  simply.  Their 
questions  will  be  interesting,  but  are  hardly 
likely  to  be  critical.  Nor  is  it  necessary  to 
select  only  what  commends  itself  to  you,  though 
certainly  such  parts  may  be  emphasized.  But 
the  inferior  and  unessential  stories  are  part 
of  the  documents  too :  they  aU  belong  to  litera- 
ture, and  should  be  known  by  educated  persons ; 
otherwise,  when  reference  is  made  to  them  in 
ordinary  human  intercourse,  there  is  a  blank. 

Take  such  an  entirely  unimportant  matter 
as  the  ages  of  the  Patriarchs  before  the  Deluge, 


HINTS  ON  TEACHING  73 

for  instance;  it  is  easy  to  criticize  a  teacher 
who  asks  a  class  about  the  traditional  age  of 
Methuselah.  There  is  no  sense  in  emphasizing 
it,  but  there  is  no  reason  why  it  should  not  be 
known.  If  children  have  been  reading  it,  there 
appears  to  be  no  reason  why  they  should  not 
be  asked  about  it ;  though  whether  the  969  repre- 
sents years  or  months  may  be  discussed  among 
students  of  folk-lore.  These  legendary  ages 
are  part  of  early  tradition,  and  are  among  the 
easy  and  interesting  parts  over  which  children 
feel  no  difficulty  and  some  interest.  They  must 
be  known,  even  if  they  are  only  to  be  explained 
away. 

Similarly  a  book  like  Judges  is  interesting 
to  children,  but  it  is  not  a  book  to  labour  at  or 
to  emphasize  unduly.  The  early  treatment  of 
these  portions  can  be  superficial  and  rapid:  to 
treat  them  ethically  demands  an  historic  sense. 

But  the  question  will  be  raised  as  to  how 
far  they  are  *  true  '  ;  and  this  brings  us  to  the 
first  important  consideration,  as  to  the  meaning 
and  comprehensiveness  of  Truth. 


CHAPTEE  II 

ASPECTS   OF  TEUTH 

ROBERT  BROWNING,  in  A  SouVs  Trag- 
edy, Act  II.,  says  that  a  philosoplier  dis- 
covers that  of  the  half  dozen  truths  known  in 
childhood  one  is  a  lie  as  the  world  states  it  in 
set  terms;  and  then  after  many  years  he  per- 
ceives that  it  is  a  truth  again,  as  he  newly  con- 
siders it  and  views  it  in  relation  with  others. 

That  represents,  in  a  sort  of  parable,  thei 
kind  of  experience  of  many  thoughtful  persons. 

Truth  has  many  aspects,  and  a  statement 
which  is  objectively  and  literally  false  or  mean- 
ingless may  have  a  subjective  truth  of  its  own 
—  a  truth  depending  more  on  the  percipient 
than  on  a  form  of  words.  Lest  this  last  sen- 
tence be  misunderstood  and  objected  to  as  mis- 
leading, I  must  instance  an  example  of  a  poeti- 
cally beautiful  expression  of  fact,  which 
nevertheless  is  not,  and  never  pretended  to  be, 
literally    true.    Shakespeare's    description    of 

74 


ASPECTS  OF  TRUTH  75 

the  dawn,  which  he  puts  into  the  month  of 
Romeo,  occurs  to  me :  — 

'Night's  candles  are  burnt  out,  and  jocund  day 
Stands  tiptoe  on  the  misty  mountain  tops.' 

Eegarded  as  a  scientific  statement  it  is  non- 
sense; and  yet  who  can  fail  to  recognize  its 
subjective  truth  and  splendid  appropriateness. 
In  this  age  of  Science,  objective  truth  is  our 
end  and  aim.  But  in  order  to  achieve  this  end 
the  aim  has  necessarily  to  be  narrow.  The  hu- 
man mind  must  take  Truth  by  stages:  it  can- 
not grasp  everything  at  once;  nor  can  any 
formula  cover  the  whole  truth.  There  is  a  truth 
of  Science  and  there  is  a  truth  of  Literature. 
To  a  narrow  view  they  appear  to  conflict,  but 
they  are  all  parts  of  a  larger  whole.  And  if 
there  is  anything  to  choose  between  them,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  perennial  acceptance  and 
understanding,  the  advantage  lies  with  litera- 
ture and  poetry.  True  to  human  nature  — 
that  is  what  a  work  of  Art  or  any  great  drama 
necessarily  is ;  but  what  does  it  matter  whether 
Hamlet,  Othello,  or  Lear  actually  lived?  Ques- 
tions of  this  kind  are  not  appropriate,  and 
need  not  be  asked  concerning  Art.    Literature, 


76        OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

if  true  at  all,  is  true  for  all  time,  and  will  ap- 
peal to  all  people  who  possess  tlie  faculties 
necessary  for  sympatlietic  comprehension. 

The  statement,  sometimes  made,  that  scien- 
tific textbooks  must  sooner  or  later  pass  out 
of  date  is  by  no  means  false,  but  it  may  easily 
be  misunderstood.  Most  of  the  assertions  in 
good  text  books  are  true  enough,  but  they  will 
be  superseded  by  other  and  better  modes  of 
statement  hereafter.  The  great  landmarks 
stand,  and  the  long  established  details  remain 
true,  but  familiar  and  recognised  forms  of 
statement  are  likely  to  vary  and  improve  as 
time  goes  on ;  hence  old  text  books  become  anti- 
quated and  superseded.  Whereas  of  poetry, 
at  least  of  great  poetry,  we  may  say,  what  was 
somewhat  paradoxically  said  by  F.  W.  H. 
Myers  in  his  Classical  Essays  (p.  21),  '  Poetry 
is  the  only  thing  which  every  age  is  certain  to 
recognise  as  truth.' 

Contrast  our  own  attitudes,  to  ancient  science 
on  the  one  hand,  and  to  ancient  art  and  poetry 
on  the  other.  The  science  of  the  amcients  is 
merely  curious :  their  art  and  poetry  and  drama 
we  cannot  excel.  These,  in  their  unapproach- 
able beauty,  represent  a  kind  of  truth  which 


ASPECTS  OF  TRUTH  77 

is  eternal.  In  so  far  as  a  thing  is  perfectly 
beautiful,  it  represents  an  ideal  in  the  mind  of 
the  Creator.  Beauty  is  the  apotheosis  of 
Truth. 

The  truths  of  science  are  admirable  and  quite 
real,  but  there  is  nothing  ultimate  about  them. 
They  are  stages  on  the  road  towards  achieve- 
ment—  a  difficult  and  infinite  road.  Science 
aims  at  Eeality:  it  is  an  ambitious  quest,  for 
absolute  Eeality  can  hardly  be  knowable  by 
us ;  but  we  aim  at  it  and  get  towards  it  by  steps. 
The  intermediate  steps,  however,  are  likely  to 
be  imperfect,  and  at  the  best  they  are  but  steps. 
They  may  in  themselves  be  less  satisfactory 
than  the  stages  or  landings  from  which  they 
lead  up. 

There  is  a  superficial  and  materialistic  criti- 
cism which  lays  undue  stress  upon  these  inter- 
mediate steps,  urging  them  into  the  foreground 
and  concentrating  attention  upon  them  as  if 
they  were  the  complete  and  absolute  Truth; 
whereas  the  whole  of  truth  is  unattainable  by 
us.  People  used  to  over-emphasize  the  sub- 
jective aspect,  and  neglect  objective  truth,  but 
it  is  now  becoming  possible  to  do  the  converse ; 
and  the  neglect  or  under-estimation  of  the  hu- 


78        OLD  TESTAMENT  iN  EDUCATION 

man  aspect  is  one  of  the  dangers  of  this  age. 
Materialistic  sceptics  are  abroad  who  see  and 
emphasize  only  one  side  of  things,  and  deny 
other  sides.  Their  assertions  may  be  true ; 
their  denials  are  often  absurd.  There  may  be 
a  world  of  emotion  in  what  physically  is  very 
simple  or  insignificant.  For,  with  Father  Wag- 
gett,  we  may  imagine  this  kind  of  materialistic 
critic  saying  to  an  audience  at  a  concert, — 
*  What  are  you  crying  about,  with  your  Wagner 
and  your  Brahms?  It  is  only  horsehair  scrap- 
ing on  catgut. ' 

Yes,  from  a  narrow  physical  point  of  view 
that  is  what  it  is.  It  can  all  be  represented 
by  vibrations  in  the  air :  all,  that  is,  except  the 
soul.  The  soul  of  the  music  is  in  humanity. 
It  is  an  affair  of  perception,  and  without  a  per- 
cipient it  is  non-existent  or  meaningless.  To 
some  human  beings,  as  to  all  animals,  an  ora- 
torio or  a  painting  is  non-existent ;  it  acts  physic- 
ally on  their  sense-organs,  but  it  conveys  no 
meaning  whatever.  And  surely  we  are  all 
blind  and  deaf  to  much  that  would  appeal 
to  higher  beings.  A  dog  in  a  picture  gallery, 
interested  in  smells  and  corners,  may  repre- 


ASPECTS  OF  TRUTH  79 

sent,  as  in  a  parable,  much  of  our  own  attitude 
to  the  Universe. 

Then  again,  take  such  an  object  as  the  Moon. 
iTo  ordinary  popular  science  the  Moon  is  a 
dead  inert  mass  of  volcanic  rocks,  without 
atmosphere,  without  life,  without  interest  —  a 
severe  dead  monotony.  But  what  has  the 
Moon  not  been  to  poets'?  And  even  the  legen- 
dary 'man  in  the  moon,'  with  his  dog  and  his 
thornbush,  has  at  least  some  humanity  about 
him.    Eemember  also  Shelley's  description  — 

*  That  orbed  maiden,  with  white  fire  laden. 
Whom  mortals  call  the  Moon.'— 

Dead  volcanic  rocks  are  poor  competitors  with 
that. 

Nevertheless  it  is  true  that  there  is  a  higher 
science  of  all  these  things, —  a  higher  science 
of  harmony  which  may  explain  the  reason  of 
the  emotions  felt  in  music,  a  higher  science  re- 
lating to  the  birth  of  the  Moon,  its  past  history 
as  an  offspring  of  the  earth,  its  tidal  influences, 
its  future  destiny  —  yea  a  higher  science  of 
matter  itself,  wherein  deadness  and  inertness 
are  preposterous  notions;  —  all  which,  when 


80        OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

known  and  used  by  a  poet,  will  eclipse  in  value 
the  legends  based  on  ignorance.  For  the  full- 
ness of  fact  must  be  full  of  human  interest 
likewise. 

'  Meanwhile  this  higher  Science  is  not  gen- 
erally known,  and  therefore  cannot  at  present 
be  utilized  for  artistic  purposes.  Its  use  lies 
in  the  future.  What  we  can  be  quite  sure  of 
is  that  human  feelings  are  more  ancient  than 
any  knowledge ;  and  that  the  instinct  for  Wor- 
ship is  ancient  and  powerful  too.  Witness  the 
feelings  induced  by  some  of  the  ordinary  proc- 
esses of  nature, —  a  sunrise,  for  instance, 
as  described  by  that  mystical  artist  and  poet 
William  Blake, 

*  What  when  the  sun  rises  do  you  see  ?  A  round  disc 
of  fire,  something  like  a  guinea  ? ' 

*  Oh,  no  no,  I  see  an  innumerable  company  of  the 
heavenly  host  crying  Holy,  Holy,  Holy  is  the  Lord  God 
Almighty.' 

In  this  spirit  the  Old  Testament  has  to  be 
interpreted  and  understood.  This  was  the 
kind  of  mood  in  which  much  of  it  was  written. 
The  great  parts  of  it  are  manifestly  inspired. 
I  tell  you  that  Inspiration  is  a  reality,  though 


ASPECTS  OF  TRUTH  81 

its  definition  is  at  present  vague.  No  au- 
thoritative definition  has  yet  been  given  by  any 
conclave  or  any  Church;  and  it  is  fortunate 
that  it  is  so,  that  our  conception  of  Inspira- 
tion may  enlarge  and  become  more  definite  as 
our  knowledge  grows. 

But  I  want  to  say  that  whatever  Inspira- 
tion means,  it  does  not  mean  infallibility.  We 
have  access  to  no  infallible  information  con- 
cerning matter  of  fact.  Our  knowledge,  as  ex- 
pressed by  even  the  highest  Science,  is  neces- 
sarily partial  and  incomplete;  it  only  deals 
with  aspects,  else  it  could  not  deal  with  things 
at  all.  It  is  the  outcome  of  our  faculty  of 
abstraction,  our  power  of  attending  to  one  part 
at  a  time,  our  power  of  dividing  and  classi- 
fying and  ignoring.  Divisions  and  classifica- 
tions are  arbitrary, —  they  are  human  con- 
veniences,—  but  Truth  itself  is  continuous. 
There  are  no  absolute  boundaries  in  Nature, 
there  is  continuity.  In  complete  knowledge 
things  are  unified  —  everything  must  be  united 
with  everything  else.  Not  material  things 
alone,  but  thought  and  feeling  and  emotion  and 
substance   and   meaning   and   all   manner   of 


82        OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

attributes ;  and  all  related  to  the  human  and  to 
the  Divine.  To  inspired  insight,  from  time  to 
time,  everything  has  been  felt  to  be  permeated 
through  and  through  with  Deity, — 

*  and  every  common  bush  afire  with  God.' 

Take  that  well-known  stanza  of  Tennyson — * 
so  well  known  that  I  need  hardly  quote  it:— ^ 

*  Flower  in  the  crannied  wall, 
I  pluck  you  out  of  the  crannies, 
I  hold  you  here,  root  and  all,  in  my  hand, 
Little  flower  —  but  if  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is.' 

But  if  that  be  so,  how  can  we  study  Botany 
or  any  other  science  1  We  could  not,  if  we  had 
in  every  case  to  contemplate  the  whole  Uni- 
verse with  which  it  is  linked.  We  must  make 
abstraction,  we  must  attend  to  such  aspects  as 
strike  us  in  our  present  condition,  and  deal 
with  the  cold  facts  accessible  to  our  senses. 
For  it  is  through  our  senses  that  we  become 
aware  of  the  Universe :  it  is  those  which  give  us 
information;  but  it  is  those  also  which  limit 
and  determine  the  kind  of  information  that 


ASPECTS  OF  TRUTH  83 

we  can  receive.  We  do  not  always  recognise 
this.  If  we  had  other  senses  the  Universe 
would  look  quite  different. 

Our  senses  tell  us  about  matter.  We  can 
imagine  beings  whose  senses  tell  them  about 
the  Ether  and  ignore  matter.  Their  point  of 
view  would  be  quite  different  to  ours,  their 
statements  discordant  and  inconsistent  with 
ours  —  apparently  inconsistent,  and  yet  both 
true  —  true  each  of  them  as  far  as  they  go. 
That  is  the  essence  of  all  human  knowledge, 
that  it  shall  be  true  as  far  as  it  goes.  It  never 
goes  all  the  way;  error  creeps  in  when  we 
think  it  does.  Even  in  mathematics  this  is 
so;  over-precise  statements  have  frequently 
had  to  be  generalised  and  supplemented.  Mis- 
takes arise  chiefly,  in  ordinary  theories  of  life, 
when  the  narrow  limitations  necessary  for 
practical  purposes  are  extended  and  supposed 
to  represent  the  whole  truth  of  things,  when 
not  only  positive  assertions  are  made,  but 
negative  ones  too. 

To  deny  is  much  more  dangerous  than  to 
assert.  In  Goethe's  drama  the  spirit  that  con- 
stantly denies,  wer  stets  verneint,  is  Mephis- 
to]3heles.    An  assertion  may  have  some  insight 


84       OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

underlying  it;  an  enthusiastic  assertion  is 
nearly  always  the  outcome  of  a  mustard  seed  of 
truth,  however  overlaid  with  error  it  may  be. 
But  a  denial  may  only  signify  a  mental  dis- 
location, a  failure  to  understand,  a  lack  of 
sympathy,  a  failure  to  appreciate  a  point  of 
view,  an  absorption  in  some  other  mode  of  re- 
garding truth.  To  deny  rightly  usually  de- 
mands much  completer  knowledge  than  to 
assert.  An  assertion  may  be  specific  and 
minute  —  the  result  of  a  perception  of  a  single 
instance.  A  denial,  to  be  effective,  may  have 
to  be  large  and  comprehensive.  And  the 
larger  its  field,  the  more  ambitious  its  scope, 
the  more  anxious  should  its  promulgator  be. 

For  instance,  to  say  that  a  certain  word 
or  certain  sentiment  occurs  in  Shakespeare 
may  be  easy.  To  say  that  it  does  not  occur,  or 
that  there  is  no  such  idea  in  the  whole  of 
literature,  is  what  very  few  would  have  the 
hardihood  to  maintain. 

So  much  for  general  principles.  Now  apply 
them  to  Hebrew  history.^ 

1 1ncidentally  I  may  here  mention  certain  books  which  may 
be  found  useful.  It  is  not  necessary  to  refer  serious  students 
to  the  works  of  Scholars,  such  as  Professor  Driver,  Principal 
George  Adam  Smith,  and  others;  but  Mx.  C.  G.  Montefiore's 


ASPECTS  OF  TRUTH  85 

"  Bible  for  Home  Keading,"  is  an  instructive  though  rather 
large  book;  and  mention  may  be  made  of  a  few  smaller 
•works:  — 

History  of  the  Eebreivs,  by  Professor  Ottley,  published  by 
the  Cambridge  University  Press.     An  excellent  treatise, 
not  adapted  to  children  but  very  helpful  to  teachers, 
and  always  taking  a  reasonable  point  of  view. 
A   recently   published   volume  by   the    Rev.    B.   H.    Alford 
(Longmans)    also  deals  with  the  historical  portions  of 
the  Old  Testament,  and  with  its  Literature. 
Then  there  is  a  book  of  lectures  by  Dr.  Marcus  Dods,  de- 
livered  in  America,  published  by   Scribner  under  the 
title,  The  Bible,  its  Origin  and  Nature. 
A  little  book  by  Father  Waggett,  published  by  Longmans, 
called    The   Scientifio    Temper   in   Religion,    is    one   in 
which  I  am  sure  many  people  would  be  interested. 
Two  or  three  other  books  I  might  mention,  one  specifically 
addressed  to  teachers  by  an  expert  teacher  himself    (at  one 
time  Master  of  Method  at  University  College,  Liverpool). 
How  to  Teach  the  Bible,  by  the  Rev.  A.  F.  Mitchell  (Wil- 
liams &  Norgate). 
A  quite  recent  and  very  thoughtful  book  about  some  modern 
difficulties  in  Christian  Doctrine,  called  The  Faith  and 
Modern  Thought,  by  the  Rev.  W.  Temple  (Macmillan). 
"A  book  of  some  learning,   called  Early   Chapters  in   Gen- 
esis, by  Bishop  Ryle  of  Winchester. 
And  then  there  is  a  collection  of  Bible  Readings  by  Mrs. 
Romanes,  published  by  Mowbray,  definitely  intended  for  chil- 
dren,  concerning  which    I  only   lack   experience   to   estimate 
whether  it  is  of  value  or  not,  for  that  purpose,  from  the  trained 
teacher's  point  of  view;  though  I  feel  sure  that  some  parenta 
would  find  it  helpful. 

So  also  they  may  find  useful  a  simple  and  unpretentious 
though  not  small  volume  by  Miss  Davidson  (T.  Werner 
Laurie)  called  The  Old  Testament  Story  told  to  the  Yovrng. 
Likewise  tha  Biblium  Innooentiuni  of  Professor  Mackail. 


CHAPTER  in 

EAELY   HISTORY   AND   LITEEATURE 

IN  the  Old  Testament  we  have  the  History 
and  Literature  of  the  race  from  whom 
Messiah  was  to  be  born.  We  have  a  record  of 
the  development  of  the  Soul  of  a  people ;  or,  in- 
asmuch as  they  were  the  leaders  of  the  human 
race  at  that  time,  we  may  call  it  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Soul  of  the  human  race. 

From  early  times  the  Hebrews  had  a  pre- 
sentiment of  the  greatness  in  store  for  them 
—  they  felt  that  in  their  seed  all  nations  of 
the  earth  were  to  be  blessed.  I  wish  to  assure 
you  that  such  veridical  presentiments  are  pos- 
sible. To  them  it  was  given  to  kindle  and  up- 
hold the  torch  of  religion  through  the  dark  and 
nascent  stages  of  history.  Through  evil 
times  and  good  times  they  were  to  keep  it 
alight,  till  their  destiny  was  accomplished.  It 
was  a  terrible  responsibility,  but  on  the  whole 
they  were  faithful  to  their  trust.    Low  though 

86 


EARLY  HISTORY  AND  LITERATURE   87 

they  fell  sometimes,  other  nations  fell  lower; 
and  the  Hebrew  genius  for  Theology,  their 
instinct  for  tracing  Divine  activity  in  every- 
thing, is  manifest  throughout  their  literature. 
Some  of  their  conceptions  of  Deity  in  early 
ages  are  no  doubt  childish.  Jehovah,  for  in- 
stance, is  said  to  walk  in  a  garden  in  the  cool 
of  the  day,  as  Zeus  walked  in  the  garden  of 
the  Hesperides, —  where  likewise  bloomed  well- 
guarded  apples.  But  these  things  are  childish 
in  the  good  sense:  they  are  poetical  modes 
of  expression  for  a  reality.  Surely  from  a 
beautiful  garden  the  Deity  is  not  absent;  or, 
as  T.  E.  Brown  the  Manx  poet  says,  '  'Tis  very 
sure  God  walks  in  mine. '  But  the  whole  poem 
is  short  and  worth  quoting, — 

*A  garden  is  a  lovcsome  thing  God  wot, 
Rose  plot, 
Fringed  pool, 
Fem'd  grot, 
The  veriest  school 
Of  peace;  and  yet  the  fool 

Contends  that  God  is  not. — 
Not  God !  in  gardens !  when  the  eve  is  cool ! 
Nay  but  I  have  a  sign ; 
'Tis  very  sure  God  walks  in  mine.' 


88       OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

Parenthetically  we  may  observe  that  the 
mere  form  which  some  of  the  legends  take  is 
instructive.  In  the  garden  of  the  Hesperides, 
the  apples  were  protected  by  a  sleepless  dragon, 
who  physically  prevented  any  attempt  at 
gathering  them.  In  the  Hebrew  legend  the 
obstacle  is  of  a  very  different  kind, —  not 
physical  at  all,  but  moral.  Nothing  prevents 
the  plucking  of  the  fruit  save  a  command;  the 
apples  are  easily  accessible,  and  the  serpent,  so 
far  from  protecting  them,  extols  their  merits 
and  encourages  disobedience.  The  change, 
from  physical  force  to  moral  suasion,  whether 
it  be  towards  good  or  towards  evil,  is  character- 
istic. 

But  in  the  Old  Testament  you  will  recall 
cases,  too  numerous  indeed,  when  in  the  mouths 
of  priests  representations  of  Deity  fell  far  be- 
low any  reasonable  standard  of  mercy  and 
justice,  and  when  acts  of  cruelty  and  deceit 
were  perpetrated  in  the  Divine  name.  Quite 
true!  At  such  times  man's  notions  of  God 
were  degraded, —  records  of  priestcraft  are 
often  painful  reading;  but  at  other  times,  and 
in  the  mouths  of  some  of  the  prophets,  the 


EARLY  HISTORY  AND  LITERATURE   89 

Hebrew  scriptures  rise  to  a  magnificence  of 
utterance  which  no  other  nation  can  paralleL 

A  literature  is  not  all  on  one  level,  different 
parts  are  naturally  of  very  different  values. 
A  history  again  is  not  all  on  one  level  of  ex- 
cellence, it  is  full  of  ups  and  downs,  of  failures 
and  successes,  of  glories  and  defeats.  Heroes 
of  the  race  are  sporadic, —  they  seem  to  ar- 
rive in  groups  —  and  there  are  intermediate 
times  of  spiritual  dearth  or  famine. 

Historical  documents  are  often  very  human, 
very  imperfect,  very  much  influenced  by  the 
grade  of  enlightenment  and  by  the  standards 
of  conduct  appropriate  to  the  time.  If  we  read 
them  with  our  eyes  on  the  twentieth  century  A. 
D.,  we  shall  hopelessly  misread.  Such  an  atti- 
tude shows  a  lack  of  culture,  as  well  as  deficient 
sympathy  and  curbed  imagination.  The  way 
to  understand  history  and  literature  is  to  place 
one's  self  in  imagination  in  the  times  when  it 
was  composed ;  to  know  something  not  only  of 
the  people  whose  history  is  given,  but  of  the 
other  peoples  among  whom  they  lived,  and  of 
the  hostile  influences  they  had  to  bear  up 
against  and,  if  it  might  be,  overcome. 


90        OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

Much  can  we  see  to  blame,  much  to  cause 
surprise,  in  the  action  of  '  a  chosen  people  '  at 
a  date  three  thousand  years  ago. 

Are  our  own  hands  then  so  clean?  Imagine 
posterity  three  thousand  years  hence  reading 
our  history,  our  newspapers,  our  politics;  — 
what  will  they  think  of  us  1  They  will  not  place 
us  very  high;  they  may  prefer,  in  some  re- 
spects, the  records  of  the  early  Plebrews. 

And  yet  we  too  are  a  chosen  people.  It  were 
blasphemy  to  deny  our  birthright  and  responsi- 
bility. Our  destiny  in  the  world  is  no  small 
one ;  we  are  peopling  great  tracts  of  the  earth, 
and  carrying  thither  our  language  and  our, 
customs.  The  migration  of  that  primitive 
tribe,  from  Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  under  the 
leadership  of  the  splendid  old  chief,  Abram, 
into  a  land  of  promise,  was  an  event  fraught 
in  the  long  run  with  stupendous  results  for  the 
human  race.  And  are  we  not  migrating  to  the 
ends  of  the  earth  now,  and  increasing  and 
multiplying  in  the  promised  lands,  towards 
which  the  tide  of  civilisation  —  a  civilisation 
better  and  happier  and  holier  than  ours,  I 
trust  —  is  slowly  but  surely  flooding  in? 


CHAPTER  IV 

GENESIS 

THE  history  of  the  Hebrews  proper  be- 
gins with  the  patriarch  Abraham;  and  in 
recording  it  the  writers  earnestly  emphasized 
every  example  of  Divine  guidance  and  inter- 
vention, as  they  perceived  it.  They  also,  with 
the  interest  of  children  and  all  early  people 
for  origins,  collected  such  information  as  was 
available  concerning  events  long  antecedent  to 
Abraham,  and  tried  to  reconstruct  the  origin  of 
man,  and  indeed  the  origin  of  all  things. 

An  ambitious  attempt !  —  appropriate  to  the 
childhood  of  the  world.  Modern  science  knows 
nothing  of  ultimate  origins.  It  never  asks 
the  question.  It  starts  with  matter  in  motion ; 
it  traces  its  past,  and  to  some  extent  its  future. 
It  may  look  backward  and  forward  for  millions 
of  years;  but  to  every  past,  however  ancient, 
there  is  an  antecedent  past ;  and  nothing  points 
to  a  beginning  nor  to  an  end.    At  every  point 

91 


92       OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

we  can  ask:  'And  what  before!  or,  What 
after? 

But  a  beginning  for  this  terrestial  globe,  the 
earth,  can  be  imagined:  and  at  a  time  when 
the  earth  and  the  universe  were  practically 
identical,  the  beginning  of  the  earth  would  seem 
like  the  beginning  of  all  things.  And  so  a 
poetic  account  of  the  Creation  is  handed  down. 
It  is  a  representation  of  certain  truths;  — 
that  there  was  gradual  development  of  life  on 
the  earth  —  lower  forms  first,  higher  later ;  that 
everything  depended  on  the  energizing  and 
brooding  power  of  a  pre-existent  and  eternal 
Divine  Spirit;  that  matter  is  amenable  to 
thought,  design,  conception;  that  everything  is 
controlled  by  a  purpose;  that  things  in  them- 
selves, and  save  as  marred  by  men,  are  on  the 
whole  '  good.' 

But  then  yon  will  say  that  having  accounted 
for  the  origin  of  everything,  including  a  com- 
plete human  race,  a  second  legend  begins, 
about  the  infusing  of  the  Divine  Spirit  into 
Adam,  and  the  fall.  Yes,  quite  true.  On  a 
different  level,  and  with  a  different  purpose, 
this  second,  the  so-called  Prophetic  narrative, 
has  a  notable  meaning  of  its  own ;  and  we  may 


GENESIS  93 

be  grateful  to  the  ancient  compilers  of  Scrip- 
ture that  they  preserved  both  these  beautiful 
documents,  and  left  it  for  us  to  understand, 
and  as  far  as  necessary  to  harmonize  them. 
Both  have  a  truth  of  their  own,  both  are  in- 
spired, and  only  to  a  shallow  Sciolism  are  they 
inconsistent.  Neither  by  itself  is  complete  — 
they  supplement  each  other  —  and  certainly 
neither  is  to  be  taken  as  a  statement  of  cold- 
blooded scientific  fact. 

Science  did  not  exist  in  those  days.  Science 
as  we  understand  it  is  a  modern  growth. 
Through  Science  we  learn  of  the  Else  of  man 
—  a  most  hopeful  doctrine.  In  Genesis  is  de- 
picted a  Fall, — 'the  beginning  of  a  conscious- 
ness of  free  will,  the  entrance  of  sin. 

The  two  are  by  no  means  inconsistent;  a 
fall  often  follows  a  rise  —  sometimes  as  a 
natural  consequence.  We  have  already  em- 
phasised this  aspect  of  things  in  Part  I,  but 
a  few  words  of  repetition  need  not  here  be 
avoided.  It  is  not  difficult  to  interpret  the 
legend  of  * '  Adam. ' '  A  knowledge  of  good  and 
evil,  a  recognition  of  responsibility  —  per- 
ception of  a  iDower  of  choice  —  must  have 
dawned  upon  some  early  genius  of  the  race, 


94        OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

into  whom  entered  the  Divine  breath  of  in- 
spiration; that  was  the  period  when  *  man  be- 
came a  living  soul.* 

Until  such  knowledge  and  consciousness  ex- 
isted there  was  no  sin  —  for  the  essence  of  sin 
is  error  in  the  light  of  knowledge, —  the  state 
of  the  nascent  human  race  must  have  been  one 
of  innocency,  like  the  animals. 

'  For  the  time 
Was  Maytime,  and  as  yet  no  sin  was  dreamed.' 

The  whole  parable  is  very  consistent  with  evo- 
lutionary science. 


CHAPTER  V 

PEOGKESSIVE   REVELATION 

SCIENCE,  as  many  people  understand  it,  is 
very  far  from  exhausting  the  whole  truth 
of  things.  True  as  far  as  it  goes,  and  con- 
tinually trying  to  go  farther, —  that  is  the  atti- 
tude of  Science.  It  aims  at  nothing  less  than  a 
knowledge  of  reality.  Reality  is  truly  an  am- 
bitious quest  —  not  likely  to  be  reached  in  its 
fullness  by  the  labours  of  a  century  or  two; 
only  to  be  approximated  to  by  the  slow  and 
laborious  methods  of  science.  Let  the  ground 
be  made  secure  and  positions  acquired  duly 
registered;  but  bear  in  mind  that  Reality  is 
necessarily  infinite,  and  that  therefore  an  infi- 
nite scope  for  discovery  and  for  a  larger  view  of 
things  always  lies  ahead. 

The  study  of  Things,  as  such,  is  still  in  its 
infancy.  In  Scottish  universities  the  pro- 
fessorship which  deals  with  the  study  of 
classics    and   pagan    literature   is    called   the 

95 


96        OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

Chair  of  '  Humanity  ' ;  in  contra-distinction,  I 
presume,  to  the  Chair  of  '  Divinity.'  And 
now  to  these  great  branches  of  knowledge  we 
have  added  a  third  —  the  study  of  things,  of 
matter  and  Ether  and  motion,  which  may  be 
called  '  Eeality  '  or  Science. 

There  can  be  no  permissible  opposition  be- 
tween the  aspects  of  this  trinity  of  knowledge. 
Eeality  in  its  fullness  must  include  not  Things 
alone,  but  Humanity  and  Divinity  too. 

Everything  has  a  real  aspect,  so  only  we 
could  grasp  it;  our  best  efforts  fall  how  far 
short!  Everything  has  a  human  aspect;  and 
that  is  the  largest  and  oldest  mode  of  regard- 
ing things  there  can  be,  for  us.  Everything 
has  a  Divine  aspect;  and  in  the  Hebrew  litera- 
ture an  attempt  is  made  to  present  things  from 
that  point  of  view. 

And  in  it  we  recognize  a  gradual  Eevelation. 
Gradual,  not  for  the  sake  of  delay  or  secrecy, 
but  because  of  the  limitation  of  human  facul- 
ties. Eevelation  is  as  rapid  as  the  race  can 
receive  it.  There  is  no  artificial  withholding 
of  information,  but  every  expression  must 
necessarily  be  in  terms  of  what  can  be  under- 
istood.    For    instance,— our    most    recondite 


PROGRESSIVE  REVELATION  97 

modern  conception  of  the  physical  Universe  is 
expressible  in  terms  of  Ether  and  Motion. 
Suppose  that  a  statement  in  such  terms  — 
appropriate  to  Lord  Kelvin  let  us  say  —  had 
been  made  to  nomad  tribes  wandering  like 
Arabs  in  the  desert,  while  they  were  going 
through  the  effort  to  found  a  civilized  race 
among  barbarous  nations.  What  mockery  it 
would  have  been!  Would  it  even  have  been 
truth?  No,  not  to  them;  something  much 
more  human  was  necessary. 

So  it  will  always  be, —  if  we  are  to  appre- 
hend God  at  all,  it  must  be  through  something 
anthropomorphic,  it  must  be  through  some 
form  of  Incarnation;  must  be  through  the 
saints  and  pinnacles  of  the  race. 

But  this  is  not  all  that  can  be  said.  The 
expression  of  the  most  advanced  modern 
science  is  in  terms  of  Ether  and  Motion.  That 
appears  to  us  to  be  nearest  the  truth,  and  we 
may  suppose  that  more  and  more  will  our  pres- 
ent mode  of  expression  improve  and  become 
clearer  and  more  definite.  But  even  so  will  it 
represent  the  whole  truth?  No.  It  will  be 
our  mode  of  formulating  things.  It  is  an  ad- 
yance,  a  great  advance,  but  it  ia  only  one  as- 


98        OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

pect  after  all.  Absolute  truth  is  always  be- 
yond us.  Any  one  who  objects  to  Genesis,  or 
to  any  other  inspired  work,  as  not  containing 
the  whole  truth,  is  talking  nonsense.  Of  course 
it  does  not!  Let  us  admit  that  ideas  of 
Godhead,  as  held  by  children  and  early  races, 
are  imperfect  and  partial:  what  then?  What 
else  have  we  now?  How  can  ideas  of  God  be 
anything  but  imperfect  and  partial?  What 
will  posterity  think  of  our  ideas?  We  have 
progressed,  I  hope,  but  the  finite  cannot  grasp 
the  infinite,  and  the  science  of  Theology,  can 
only  mean  such  conception  of  Deity  as  the  hu- 
man race  has  attained  to.  One  conception  is 
higher  than  another  —  none  is  perfect.  Early 
ideas  were  very  imperfect.  Very  well,  but  some 
were  lofty,  some  magnificent.  Here  we  have 
recorded  the  ideas  of  the  nation  with  the  great- 
est genius  for  theology;  and  their  character 
varies  from  time  to  time.  Some  are  low;  yes, 
but  if  we  also  had  recorded  the  theological 
ideas  of  the  Hivite,  the  Hittite,  and  the  Jebu- 
site,  among  whom  they  lived,  what  should  we 
think  of  them? 

And  it  was  not  theoretical  knowledge  only 
that  they  were  imbued  with;  their  task  was  to 


PROGRESSIVE  REVELATION  99 

infuse  practical  conduct  with  religious  emo- 
tion,—  to  weld  the  two  together; — and  in  the 
infancy  of  the  race  that  was  no  light  task. 

'We  are  so  accustomed  to  think  of  religion 
and  morality  together  —  or  even  as  one  —  that 
we  may  fail  to  grasp  the  fact  that  there  was 
a  time  when  they  were  quite  separate.  Wor- 
ship is  common  to  man,  but  worship  may  be 
very  far  from  moral.  It  usually  involves 
sacrifice  and  ceremonies  and  a  priesthood,  but 
it  may  be  associated  with  terrible  cruelty  and 
with  the  most  disgusting  orgies.  The  temples 
of  some  of  the  heathen  were  unspeakable. 

To  the  Israelites  it  was  given,  under  the 
guidance  of  their  great  leader  Moses,  to  as- 
sociate together  Eeligion  and  Morality  for  all 
time;  and  the  Ten  Commandments  are  a  per- 
manent record  of  their  clear  perception  of  the 
primary  duties  of  a  holy  nation.  The  clauses 
cover  — 

Loyalty  to  Jehovah  as  the  one  God; 

A  pure  and  non-idolatrous  worship ; 

Reverence  for  his  holy  Name  and  ordi- 
nances ; 

Filial  Piety;  Purity; 

Honesty;  Fair  Dealing; 


100      OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

Eestraint  of  Greed. 

Have  we  got  very  far  beyond  them,  even 
now! 

The  Law  of  Sinai  declared  (says  Professor 
Ottley),  in  an  age  when  the  notion  was  wholly 
new  and  unfamiliar,  that  religion  and  morality, 
truth  and  righteousness,  are  vitally  and  in- 
dissolubly  connected. 


CHAPTEE  VI 


THE   PROBLEM    OF   EVIL. 


TAKE  the  Old  Testament  as  a  whole.  First 
we  have  an  attempt  to  solve  the  problem  of 
existence  —  the  ancient  and  insoluble  problem, 
how  do  things  come  to  be.  Why  is  it  that  any- 
thing at  all  exists? 

Existence  is  attributed  to  the  Word  of  God, 
the  Logos.  God  spake.  It  is  represented  as 
the  outcome  of  reason,  design,  and  purpose; 
and,  whether  we  take  it  in  the  first  of  Genesis 
or  the  first  of  John,  we  cannot  get  beyond  that 
even  now. 

Next  it  deals  with  the  growth  of  enlighten- 
ment and  the  entrance  of  sin  —  the  legend  of 
man's  first  disobedience,  that  is  of  conscious 
disobedience.  Sin  appears  as  the  result  of 
knowledge,  the  result  of  a  rise  in  development, 
the  perception  of  good  and  evil,  the  conscious- 
ness of  a  power  of  choice.  Nothing  more  was 
necessary  than  the  attainment  of  that  stage: 

101 


102      OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

for  when  that  stage  was  reached,  by  a  being  as 
yet  imperfect,  sin  necessarily  followed.  Sin 
is  a  heavy  price  to  pay  for  human  progress, 
but  it  was  inevitable,  unless  the  aim  was  mere 
mechanical  compulsory  perfection.  The  aim 
is  higher  than  that ;  and  the  conscious  effort  of 
humanity,  then  begun,  stiR  continues.  We  have 
to  learn  to  do  right  because  we  ivill,  not  because 
we  must.  We  are  free  agents.  We  can  choose. 
We  know  good  from  e\^l. 

The  spirit  of  the  legend  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
entirely  consistent  with  the  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion; we  see  the  same  thing  happening  in  an 
individual  life.  A  baby  scratches  the  eye  of  its 
brother  —  it  does  many  things  disgraceful  to 
adults  —  it  is  not  held  responsible.  An  age  of 
innocence  is  far  from  a  state  of  perfection. 
The  nascent  soul,  like  the  nascent  race,  must 
pass  through  a  period  of  struggle  and  conscious 
effort;  it  must  develop  its  own  will,  and  grow 
into  the  region  of  light  and  Imowledge.  But 
with  that  development  the  early  innocence  in- 
evitably ceases,  and  the  possibility  of  sin  enters 
—  sin,  which  is  seeing  the  better  and  choosing 
the  worse. 

There  is  nothing  that  can  be  called  an  in- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  103 

tellectual  *  problem  '  about  sin,  it  is  a  definite 
and  positive  reality.  Given  the  possibility  of 
evil,  sin  is  easy  to  understand,  and  in  so  far  as 
there  is  a  problem,  it  is  a  problem  in  Humanity ; 
humannm  est  errare.  There  is  a  problem  of 
evil,  which  is  quite  a  different  thing ; —  that  is 
a  problem  in  Divinity,  not  in  Humanity.  The 
book  of  Genesis  does  not  deal  with  that.  It 
is  a  problem  of  later  date,  it  is  the  subject  of 
the  poem  which  we  know  as  the  book  of  Job, 
and  it  is  often  referred  to  by  the  prophets. 
The  problem  of  evil ;  —  why  was  evil  per- 
mitted to  exist  1  why  is  there  pain  and  suffering 
and  death?  what  is  meant  by  '  the  far-off  in- 
terest of  tears  '"?  —  I  do  not  know  if  children 
ask  these  questions,  I  think  they  belong  to  a 
more  adult  stage,  but  with  certain  persons  the 
difficulty  so  raised  is  acute ;  and  it  has  contrib- 
uted before  now  to  a  kind  of  atheism,  or,  what 
is  much  the  same  thing,  to  pessimism. 

Yet  by  a  little  clear  thinking  the  difficulty 
disappears.  The  very  fact  that  it  is  asked  is 
a  sign  of  latent  optimism.  In  a  truly  pessim- 
istic Universe  there  would  be  no  problem  of 
evil,  there  would  be  a  problem  of  good, —  no 
problem  of  sorrow,  but  a  problem  of  joy.    If 


104      OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

everything  is  as  bad  as  it  can  be,  how  comes 
it  that  any  happiness  exists?  What  is  the 
meaning  of  beauty,  and  love,  and  mutual  help, 
and  other  forms  of  goodness?  Are  these 
things  mere  instruments  of  disguised  torment? 
Are  they  not  essentially  good  in  themselves? 

But  these  questions  are  not  asked.  These 
are  not  the  difficulties  that  oppress  humanity. 
"VVe  ask  why  is  suffering  permitted,  and  thereby 
imply  that  joy  is  the  natural  condition  of  life; 
the  opposite  is  felt  to  be  unnatural,  or  at  least 
to  require  explanation. 

An  explanation  is  contained  in  the  relativity 
of  all  existence;  every  existence  must  have  its 
boundary  and  its  negation,  contrast  and  change 
are  of  the  essence  of  our  perceptions.  Up 
would  have  no  meaning  if  there  were  no  down ; 
Good  would  be  unintelligible  if  there  were  no 
evil ;  Force  would  be  unnecessary  if  there  were 
no  inertia. 

Here  is  a  point  which  demands  and  is  worthy 
of  some  elaboration.  To  seize  the  meaning 
fully  will  require  some  effort.  Exertion  of 
force  implies  a  reaction,  it  does  not  necessarily 
imply  a  resistance.  The  two  are  frequently 
confused,  and  hence  has  arisen  Manichoeism 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  105 

and  many  another  outcome  of  confused 
thought.  Action  and  Eeaction  are  always 
equal  and  opposite,  but  the  reaction  may  be 
caused  in  very  different  ways.  A  rope  may  be 
pulled  because  it  is  attached  to  a  massive  truck 
or  canal  barge,  in  order  to  make  it  advance.  A 
rope  may  also  be  pulled  because  something 
animate  is  pulling  in  the  opposite  direction. 
In  the  latter  case  there  is  active  resistance,  com- 
petition, opposing  force,  obstruction.  In  the 
former  case  there  need  be  no  obstruction — • 
nothing  but  inertia.  The  pull  is  just  as  hard, 
but  there  is  no  organized  opposition;  the  re- 
action is  dependent  on  the  rate  of  advance,  it  is 
directly  proportional  to  the  acceleration.  It  is 
a  sign  of  progress :  it  is  dynamic,  not  static. 

There  are,  therefore,  two  kinds  of  conflict  — 
the  active  and  the  passive  kind.  Conflict 
against  wilful  opposition,  on  the  one  hand ;  con- 
flict against  inevitable  and  inherent  difficulties, 
on  the  other. 

There  is  a  conflict  of  activity  with  sluggish- 
ness, for  instance;  and  of  this  character  is 
much  Divine  expenditure  of  energy ;  but  it  may 
be  mistaken  for  a  conflict  with  some  opposing 
activity.    I  do  not  say  that  there  are  no  op- 


106      OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

posing  activities  in  the  Universe  —  we  know 
there  are.  Human  beings  are  not  only  sluggish 
and  inert,  but  at  times  are  actively  wicked. 
This  is  one  of  the  dire  privileges  of  free  will. 
As  free  beings  we  have  the  power  to  oppose 
the  purposes  of  the  Creator,  to  retard  progress, 
and  to  deface  his  work. 

But  apart  from  all  such  active  opposition, 
effort  is  still  necessary.  Progress  is  not  easy. 
It  were  blasphemy  to  say  that  it  is  easy.  Evo- 
lution is  not  carried  on  without  effort.  Much 
of  the  effort  may  be  frequently  described  as  a 
struggle  of  positive  good  with  negative  evil. 
A  struggle  as  of  force  against  inertia.  A  con- 
flict as  of  Heat  with  Cold,  of  Light  with  Dark- 
ness. The  analogy  is  suggested  in  the  Old 
Testament  — 

'I  form  the  light,  and  create  darkness; 
I  make  peace,  and  create  evil.' 

But  yet  darkness  is  not  really  positive,  it 
is  not  a  thing  in  itself  —  it  is  merely  the  ab- 
sence of  light.  Moreover,  in  its  proper  place 
it  is  a  necessity,  we  could  not  know  of  light 
were  there  not  grades  of  it ;  and  grades  of  light 
are   relative   darkness.    Degrees   of  darkness 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  107 

there  must  be:  all  high  light,  and  where  were 
the  picture?  There  must  be  light  and  shade. 
No  one  asks  why  parts  of  an  engraving  are 
darker  than  the  rest,  it  is  felt  to  be  inevitable 
and  right.  May  we  not  similarly  say  that  with- 
out evil  the  Universe  would  be  all  high  light, 
a  meaningless  blank  monotony. 

Why  then  do  we  think  of  evil  as  evil?  A 
definite  and  easily  answered  question.  For 
perpetual  darkness,  too,  is  an  evil  —  to  crea- 
tures endowed  with  sight  an  intolerable  evil, — 
so  is  any  kind  of  negation  or  annihilation. 
Nothingness  is  appalling  to  a  creature,  but  it  is 
because  of  high  organisation  that  it  is  so:  not 
because  nothingness  is  a  positive  existence  or 
anything  in  itself.  So  it  is  with  darkness. 
Without  eyes  we  should  know  nothing  of  it. 
It  is  the  height  of  our  development  that  makes 
it  dreadful. 

Cold,  again,  is  the  absence  of  heat.  The  most 
excessive  cold  is  nothing  in  itself.  Heat  is  the 
positive  thing,  Cold  is  mere  molecular  quies- 
cence, stagnation,  negation  of  atomic  movement. 
Yet,  to  a  highly  organized  being,  excessive  cold 
is  a  dreadful  evil,  from  which  we  shrink;  but 
again  it  is  the  height  of  our  organisation  which 


108      OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

makes  it  evil :  it  is  no  evil  to  stocks  and  stones. 

Are  all  evils  of  this  negative  character  I  No, 
they  are  sometimes  positive  goods  got  out  of 
control  and  out  of  place,  like  fire  or  flood.  Dis- 
ease is  of  this  nature.  There  is  a  conflict  of 
disease  with  health,  and  disease  is  to  us  an 
unmitigated  evil.  But  what  is  it  in  itself?  It 
is  not  a  negation,  as  cold  and  darkness  are,  it  is 
something  quite  positive  —  like  pain.  What  we 
call  disease  is  the  growth  of  a  low  form  of  life 
at  the  expense  of  a  higher ;  it  is  the  flourishing 
of  micro-organisms  in  the  blood;  it  is  quite 
analogous  to  weeds  in  a  garden,  or  to  parasite 
and  blight.  Every  form  of  life,  in  itself  and  in 
its  own  place,  must  be  evidently  good.  Anyone 
who  could  construct  the  lowest  living  organism, 
a  single  living  cell  of  animal  or  plant,  would 
have  achieved  a  miracle.  The  damaging  power 
of  such  cells,  the  reason  they  are  stigmatized 
as  disease-germs,  depends  on  the  existence  of  a 
higher  organism  and  on  their  interference  with 
it.  They  are  relatively  evil,  therefore,  when 
they  come  into  competition  with  other  life. 
Competition  is  often  evil. 

Weeds  are  plants,  and  have  a  beauty  and 
fitness  of  their  own:  it  is  only  when  they  take 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL  109 

the  place  of  something  better  that  they  become 
noxious.  Ivy  is  beautiful  enough,  but  it  may 
strangle  an  oak.  It  is  things  out  of  place  that 
are  bad,  not  things  in  themselves.  All  evil  is 
relative,  and  its  relation  is  with  higher  forms 
of  goodness. 

To  contend  that  disease  is  a  nonentity  and 
merely  imaginary,  as  some  do,  is  absurd;  it 
is  positively  and  thoroughly  bad ;  but  to  say  that 
the  life  of  any  organization  in  itself  is  bad  must 
be  untrue.  Out  of  control,  however,  it  may  be 
as  dangerous  as  a  tiger.  Fire  is  clearly  good 
in  itself  —  a  most  beneficent  discovery  of  some 
early  Prometheus  of  the  race, —  but  fire  out  of 
place  is  deadly  and  destructive. 

And  here  I  shall  interpolate  for  a  moment  a 
controversial  note. 

Any  one  who  wrests  this  reasonable  conten- 
tion and  exposition  as  to  the  nature  of  evil,  and 
says  that  it  is  a  minimising  or  condoning  of  sin 
< —  thus  confusing  a  problem  in  Divinity  with  a 
problem  in  Humanity  —  is  either  ignorantly  on 
purposely  misleading  his  hearers.  Misstate- 
ments of  this  kind  are  not  absent  from  religious 
periodical  literature  and  from  the  utterance 
of  militant  critics :  they  should  be  received  with 


110      OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

silence,  were  it  not  that  such,  misrepresenta- 
tions do  harm.  They  are  not  a  fair  weapon  of 
controversy. 

Sin  is  man-made  and  unnecessary  evil.  It 
is  the  planting  of  tares  instead  of  wheat.  It 
is  the  act  of  an  enemy.  Because  we  claim 
that  evil  is  a  necessary  ingredient  in  a  develop- 
ing Universe,  we  admit  no  condonation  or  jus- 
tification for  evils  which  are  man-made.  Ours 
is  the  power  to  cure,  and  our  conscious  freedom 
has  given  us  fuU  responsibility  for  whatever 
is  in  our  control.  For  this  distinction  between 
evil  in  itself  and  evil  due  to  wilful  wrong-doing 
we  have  high  authority :  — 

'  It  must  needs  be  that  offences  come,  but  woe  be  to  that 
man  by  whom  they  come.' 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   HUMAN   OUTLOOK 

THEOLOGIANS  tell  ns  that  human  nature 
is  intrinsically  bad.  But  human  nature 
necessarily  begins  in  childhood,  and  in  that  we 
are  told  there  is  a  goodness  like  that  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven.  How  much  of  the  sup- 
posed evil  of  human  nature  is  due  to  artificial 
and  unnecessary  conditions?  Surely  we  can 
see  that  much  of  human  sin  is  due  to  bad  con- 
ditions and  hampering  environment ;  and  nearly 
all  of  this  is  man-made.  The  wretchedness  of 
poverty  is  no  Divine  institution,  it  is  the  out- 
come of  devil  worship.  Life  as  it  is,  is  utterly 
different  from  life  as  it  might  be.  It  is  de- 
faced by  mammon  and  greed.  The  hope  is  that 
we  are  still  in  the  morning  of  the  times.  The 
human  race  is  a  recent  growth  upon  the  earth, 
and  its  palmy  days  lie  in  the  future.  But  an 
immense  amount  of  work  has  to  be  done.  The 
better  future  of  the  race  will  not  arrive  auto- 
Ill 


112      OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

matically,  it  must  be  worked  for.  But  the  good 
is  there  all  the  time,  it  is  hidden  and  choked 
and  stunted  and  fruitless.  It  is  for  us  to  help 
it  to  grow. 

We  cannot  bring  non-existent  good  to  birth, 
any  more  than  we  can  make  dead  things  grow. 
The  germ  must  be  in  the  things  themselves: 
and  higher  influences  must  be  at  work,  too. 
Plants  grow,  not  because  of  the  gardener,  but  by 
their  own  nature,  with  the  aid  of  sunshine  and 
air.  Without  these  higher  influences  we  are 
helpless  to  make  either  vegetation  or  humanity 
flourish;  but  we  can  perform  the  task  of  the 
gardener,  we  can  keep  the  soil  clean,  and  let 
in  the  sunshine  and  air,  we  can  give  all  Divine 
agencies  a  chance  to  do  their  beneficent  work. 
Whatever  is  beyond  our  power  we  must  leave; 
for  that  we  are  not  responsible. 

But  here  a  personal  caution !  As  to  our  own 
souls,  we  are  fully  responsible.  We  can  at  least 
control  them.  Let  us  not  seize  explanations 
that  can  be  given  for  the  failures  of  the  race 
and  apply  them  to  our  own  undoing.  We  who 
have  attained  the  gifts  of  thought,  of  percep- 
tion, of  clarity  of  vision, —  we  are  not  to  be  at 
the  mercy  of  surroundings,  however  deleter!- 


THE  HUMAN  OUTLOOK  113 

ous  their  influence  may  be,  and  however  much 
they  may  be  pleaded  in  mitigation  of  judgment 
on  behalf  of  the  average  of  mankind.  We  can 
be  free,  not  enslaved.  '■  Give  me  the  man  that 
is  not  passion's  slave,'  says  Hamlet, '  and  I  will 
wear  him  in  my  heart,  yea,  in  my  heart  of 
hearts.'  That  is  the  true  dignity  of  man.  Ex- 
cuses which  can  be  made  for  the  race  and  for 
the  ignorant  herd  are  no  excuse  for  the  en- 
lightened individual, —  not  for  the  individual 
who  sees  and  knows,  not  for  him  who  realises 
the  talents  and  the  task  entrusted  to  him,  and 
who  feels  what  is  ex^^ected  of  him. 

^Man  is  his  own  star,  and  the  soul  that  can 
Render  an  honest  and  a  perfect  man, 
Commands  all  light,  all  influence,  all  fate; 
Nothing  to  him  falls  early  or  too  late; 
Our  acts  our  angels  are,  or  good  or  ill. 
Our  fatal  shadows  that  walk  by  us  still.' 

The  race  has  a  long  struggle  before  it,  and 
the  struggle  began  long  ago.  The  Old  Testa- 
ment records  its  early  stages,  and  strangely  low 
at  times  it  seemed  to  fall.  But  then,  how  high 
it  rose !  The  average  land  is  slowly  rising,  but 
the  peaks  stand  out  far  above  it. 


114      OLD  TESTAMENT  IN  EDUCATION 

The  potentiality  of  tlie  race  is  sliown  by  what 
has  been  already  achieved.  This  also  is  re- 
corded. In  the  documents  bound  together  as 
our  Bible  is  traced  the  growth  of  the  race  from 
early  beginnings  to  the  loftiest  Personality  we 
have  yet  seen.  He  also  is  of  our  race:  let  no 
theological  subtleties  deprive  us  of  that  great 
encouragement. 

Here  is  the  record  the  long  pathetic  ac- 
count of  the  struggle  upward  of  the  human 
race,  especially  of  its  strivings  toward  religious 
and  moral  development :  up  till  it  culminates  in 
the  measure  of  the  fullness  of  the  stature  of 
Christ. 

Seen  in  the  light  of  evolution,  the  early  im- 
perfections, the  manifold  sins  and  wickedness, 
out  of  which  we  have  emerged,  are  an  encour- 
agement and  a  hope.  These  are  in  our  past, 
not  our  future.  Seeing  what  we  have  been,  and 
what  we  may  be,  does  not  indeed  reconcile  us 
with  what  we  are,  but  it  gives  us  hope  and  en- 
couragement and  strength  to  progress. 

Having  risen  thus  far,  we  may  hope  to  rise 
further,  and  to  overcome  in  the  course  of  a  few 
more  generations  some  of  the  avoidable,  the 
man-made^  the  terrible  evils  which  now  exist  — 


THE  HUMAN  OUTLOOK  115 

the  slums,  the  destitution,  the  workhouses,  the 
prisons, —  the  unnatural  squalor  which  is  the 
parent  of  so  much  of  modern  evil  and  sin;  all 
these  should  gradually  cease  their  tormenting 
hold  upon  us. 

Effort  there  must  always  be,  but  human  effort 
should  be  other  and  higher  and  nobler  than  this 
squalid  struggle.  That  must  surely  cease ;  and 
in  the  light  of  the  Gospel,  by  the  energies  of 
the  brave  men  and  women  of  the  present  and 
the  future,  our  improving  condition  shall  some 
day  develop  into  an  earthly  paradise,  where 
the  Divine  Kingdom  shall  have  really  come,  and 
where,  by  a  finer  and  healthier  and  happier  hu- 
manity, the  will  of  God  shall  be  really  done  on 
earth  as  it  is  done  in  heaven. 


REASON  AND  BELIEF 

PART  III 
THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 


THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 
CHAPTER  I 

AIMS   AND   LIMITATIONS 

THE  term  Science  may  be  used  in  a  narrow 
or  in  a  broad  signification.  Sometimes 
the  one  is  convenient,  but  always  the  other 
is  permissible;  and  if  the  use  of  the  term  in 
the  narrow  sense  tends  to  obscure  its  larger 
significance,  then  in  that  connexion  such  use 
must  be  deprecated. 

It  is  rather  commonly  supposed  that  the  re- 
gion amenable  to  strictly  scientific  study  is  a 
narrow  one,  and  that  it  by  no  means  embraces, 
nor  will  ever  embrace,  the  whole  of  possible 
knowledge.  A  boundary  is  often  drawn  be- 
tween the  scientific  arena,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  literary,  the  philosophic,  the  religious  do- 
mains on  the  other.  But  in  truth  no  such 
boundary  can  be  drawn;  there  are  no  absolute 

11^ 


120  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

barriers  or  discontinuities  in  nature.  Every 
subject  merges  into,  and  has  more  or  less  con- 
nexion with,  every  other.  It  is  true  that  sub- 
jects are  in  very  different  stages  of  maturity; 
more  exact  and  precise  knowledge  is  attainable 
in  some  of  them  than  in  others.  Those  subjects 
which,  in  a  given  epoch  of  the  world's  history, 
are  susceptible  of  exact  and  demonstrative 
treatment  —  especially  those  which  are  amen- 
able to  the  alternate  analysis  and  synthesis  of 
the  Newtonian  method  —  constitute  the  citadel 
of  the  scientific  domain.  But  there  are  also 
sciences  which  as  yet  are  almost  wholly  in  the 
stages  of  observation  and  classification,  and 
any  one  of  these  may  develop  sooner  or  later 
into  something  more  like  the  deductive  stage; 
as  chemistry  has  within  the  last  century  —  the 
discovery  not  only  of  new  compounds  but  even 
of  new  elements  being  predicted, —  and  as  bi- 
ology has  begun  to  show  signs  of  doing  under 
the  stimulus  supplied  by  the  genius  of  Darwin 
and  of  Mendel. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  tendency 
towards  advance  from  the  vague  to  the  definite 
is  a  constantly  progressive  one,  and  that  depart- 


AIMS  AND  LIMITATIONS  121 

ments  of  human  experience  now  apparently  be- 
yond treatment  by  rigorous  methods,  will  grad- 
ually be  incorporated  and  fused  in  the  con- 
quered and  explored  territory. 

Meanwhile  they  are  not  shut  off  from  human 
scrutiny  merely  because  rigid  treatment  is  not 
yet  applicable.  They  must  be  treated  by 
methods  appropriate  to  the  stage  to  which  our 
minds  have  risen  with  respect  to  them.  No 
contempt  for  such  methods  should  be  felt,  ex- 
cept when  they  are  applied  in  departments 
wherein  they  have  already  been  superseded. 

Truth  has  many  channels  for  entering  the 
mind,  and  conviction  of  truth  can  be  attained 
during  moods  not  of  active  inquiry  only,  but 
of  passive  receptivity  also.  Insight  is  possible, 
not  so  much  through  mental  effort  as  through 
a  wise  acquiescence  in  those  intuitions  of  genius 
which  may  rightly  be  called  faith. 

Thus  does  Wordsworth  express  this  experi- 
ence of  direct  inspiration  — 

Nor  less  I  deem  that  there  are  Powers 
Which  of  themselves  our  muids  impress; 
That  we  can  feed  this  mind  of  ours 
In  a  wise  passiveness.' 


122  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

*  Thiiik  you,  'mid  all  this  mighty  sum 
Of  things  for  ever  speaking, 
That  nothing  of  itself  will  comei 
But  we  must  still  be  seeking  I ' 

Some  tliere  are  who  regard  the  scientific  ad- 
vance, or,  as  they  call  it,  encroachment,  upon 
wild  and  unexplored  territory  with  dislike, 
thinking  that  the  process  will  be  death  to  mys- 
tery and  will  reduce  all  nature  to  matter-of- 
fact  and  commonplace.  In  geography  it  must 
to  some  extent  be  so,  since  the  surface  of  the 
earth  is  limited.  But  those  who  realise  the 
infinitude  of  complexity  in  the  simplest  exist- 
ence, and  the  way  in  which  the  whole  of  creation 
is  bound  together  without  barriers  or  bounda- 
ries or  limitations,  forming  one  continuous  and 
infinite  whole,  will  have  no  such  fear;  nor  will 
they  think  it  inappropriate  for  a  scientific  man 
to  cast  his  eyes  around,  from  time  to  time,  to 
see  what  new  departments  of  knowledge  may  be 
coming  within  his  ken.  Indeed  they  will  not 
hesitate  to  welcome  such  advances,  and  reach 
out  a  hand  to  catch,  as  best  they  may,  some  an- 
ticipation of  the  interest  that  must  thus  legiti- 
ro'ately  accrue  to  the  accumulated  wealth  of 
kriowledge  now  within  our  grasp. 


AIMS  AND  LIMITATIONS  123 

The  narrow  specializing  attitude  is  useful, 
and  has  performed  yeoman  service  —  the  work 
of  the  delver  and  digger  is  of  the  utmost  value ; 
— but  they  must  not,  through  use  and  wont, 
gradually  acquire  the  notion  that  their 's  is  the 
only  method  of  value,  or  that  the  work  of  the 
humanist,  the  inspiration  of  the  poet,  the  guides 
available  through  the  intuition  and  instincts 
of  humanity,  are  deceitful  will-o'-the-wisps 
which  lead  to  nothing. 

There  is  room  for  every  class  of  worker ;  and 
the  men  of  science  themselves  may  in  certain 
moods  raise  themselves  out  of  their  groove 
of  steady  work  and  look  around,  as  one 
and  another  have  always  done,  and  tell  the 
world  what  it  is  that  they  see  from  their  point 
of  vantage, —  wherever  that  point  of  vantage 
may  be,  whether  on  elevated  peak  or  in  subter- 
ranean cavern.  For  however  it  may  be  re- 
garded by  others,  still  it  is  their  point  of  view, 
the  place  they  have  attained  through  severe 
toil;  and  it  is  not  only  their  right  but  their 
duty  to  tell  such  other  workers  as  will  listen 
what  it  is  that  thence  they  see. 

There  is  nothing  new  in  this  contention,  it 
has  been  urged  upon  us  by  one  and  another  of 


124  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

the  leaders  of  the  race ;  though  never  frequently, 
nor  with  any  iteration.  It  is  latent,  however, 
in  much  of  the  feeling  which  is  current  about 
the  privileges  and  the  limitations  of  the  scien- 
tific explorer.  Sometimes  he  is  listened  to  over 
much,  sometimes  he  is  not  listened  to  at  all; 
seldom  do  his  words  receive  that  moderate  and 
reasonable  attention  which  the  circumstances 
demand.  And  for  some  of  the  misapprehen- 
sion, we  must  admit  that  scientific  workers 
themselves  have  been  partly  to  blame. 

As  an  example  of  the  wholesome  adjurations 
thrown  out  to  them  from  the  department  of 
Letters  and  Humane  learning,  I  shall  take  the 
utterances  of  Wordsworth,  who  in  Book  IV.  of 
The  Excursion  emphasizes  the  privilege  of  the 
man  called  to  exact  research  —  the  man  en- 
dowed with  the  power  and  the  opportunity  for 
scientific  investigation,  thus :  — 

*  Happy  is  he  who  lives  to  understand, 
Not  human  nature  only,  but  explores 
All  natures  —  to  the  end  that  he  may  find 
The  law  that  governs  each;  and  where  begins 
The  union,  the  partition  where,  that  makes 
Kind  and  degree,  among  all  visible  Beuags; 
The  constitutions,  powers,  and  faculties. 


AIMS  AND  LIMITATIONS  125 

Which  they  inherit, —  cannot  step  beyond, — 
And  cannot  fall  beneath;  that  do  assign 
To  every  class  its  station  and  its  office, 
Through  all  the  mighty  commonwealth  of  things; 
Up  from  the  creeping  plant  to  sovereign  Man.' 

But  he  strongly  deprecates  the  narrowing  ten- 
dency which  such  specialised  studies  may  have 
upon  the  intelligence,  if  pursued  undeviatingly 
through  a  lifetime  without  any  wider  and  more 
comprehensive  purview.  Scientific  men,  more 
than  others,  should  keep  their  mind  and  senses 
open  to  a  broader  outlook,  and  to  the  reception 
of  all  that  can  display  itself,  or  that  can  by 
any  means  be  discerned,  in  the  great  amphi- 
theatre of  truth.  It  is  piteous  when  higher 
faculties  suffer  atrophe  through  over-speciali- 
sation, or  when  the  worker,  by  dint  of  too 
concentrated  service,  is  reduced  below  his  pat- 
ent of  nobility. 

*  Shall  men  for  whom  our  age 
Unbaffled  powers  of  vision  hath  prepared, 
To  explore  the  world  without  and  world  within, 
Be  joyless  as  the  blind?    Ambitious  spirits  — 
Whom  earth,  at  this  late  season,  hath  produced 
To  regulate  the  moving  spheres,  and  weigh 
The  planets  in  the  hollow  of  their  hand; 


126  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

And  they  who  rather  dive  than  soar,  whose  pains 
Have  solved  the  elements,  or  analysed 
The  thualdng  principle  —  shall  they  in  fact 
Prove  a  degraded  Race  ■? ' 

Shall  they  not  rather  detect  in  the  phe- 
nomena of  nature  more  fullness  of  meaning 
than  can  be  perceived  by  others?  Shall  they 
not  at  times  read  an  infinite  message  even  in 
the  stones  beneath  their  feet!  Shall  not  they 
who  '  come  forth  into  the  light  of  things,'  and 
*  let  Nature  be  their  teacher,'  be  stimulated 
to  large  perception  by  the  enthusiasm  of  a  dis- 
covery, even  as  others  are  made  receptive  of 
higher  truth  by  a  work  of  art  or  of  music,  or 
as  a  child  may  have  its  imagination  kindled 
and  its  thought  aroused  by  listening  to  the 
murmur  of  a  shell. 

It  were  indeed  desperate  if  the  scientific  in- 
stinct and  reasoning  habit  cut  off  the  connexion 
between  sense  and  soul,  and  made  the  deeper 
insight  impossible :  — 

*  The  estate  of  man  would  be  indeed  forlorn 
If  false  conclusions  of  the  reasoning  power 
Made  the  eye  blind,  and  closed  the  passages 
Through  which  the  ear  converses  with  the  heart,* 


AIMS  AND  LIMITATIONS  127 

And  Wordsworth  goes  on  to  press  the  ques- 
tion upon  each  individual,  and  to  ask  whether 
there  have  not  been  periods  during  which  a 
flash  of  inspiration  has  been  experienced. 
(Incidentally  the  emphasis  here  laid  on  '  calm- 
ness '  as  a  condition  for  the  reception  of  in- 
spired thoughts  —  in  unison  with  Plotinus  and 
iTennyson  —  is  noteworthy) :  — 

'  Has  not  the  soul,  the  being  of  your  life> 
Received  a  shock  of  awful  consciousness, 
In  some  calm  season.' 

If  that  experience  has  ever  been  felt,  then  al- 
though it  is  true  that  '  the  spirit  bloweth  as  it 
listeth,'  and  true  likewise  that  '  in  mystery  the 
soul  abides,'  yet  it  behoves  the  scientific  man 
to  try  to  comprehend  whence  the  inspiration 
comes,  and  to  formulate  if  he  can  the  laws  of 
its  being. 

But  there  is  still  more  that  can  be  said  in 
this  direction,  and  still  more  emphasis  to  be 
laid  on  the  value  of  intuition  and  spontaneous 
thoughts. 

It  is  sometimes  surprising  to  a  scientific  man, 
or  at  least  to  a  youth  in  the  full  flush  of  ardour 


128  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

for  scientific  knowledge,  how  the  antique 
studies  of  the  humanists,  and  the  apparently 
fantastic  utterances  of  imaginative  writers,  can 
possibly  conduce  to  progress  or  in  the  long  run 
elevate  humanity. 

I  must  confess  —  even  though  it  sound  dis- 
graceful —  that  long  ago  I  had  a  sort  of  inner 
conviction  that  devotion  to  art  and  letters  was 
a  waste  of  time,  that  even  natural  beauty  was  a 
distraction,  that  nothing  was  worthy  of  serious 
attention  that  did  not  add  to  positive  knowl- 
edge. Fortunately  I  outgrew  this  green  phase, 
though  I  am  far  from  regretting  the  concen- 
trated enthusiasm  which  was  its  origin ;  it  was 
not  altogether  a  bad  phase  to  pass  through, 
provided  it  were  passed  through,  for  it  certainly 
was  not  an  unproductive  or  ineffective  period: 
it  led  to  an  extraordinary  amount  of  hard  work, 
and  strangled  for  the  time  any  tendency  to 
distraction  and  multifarious  interests. 

It  is  not  impertinent  to  mention  this  little 
fact  of  autobiography,  because  I  realize  that 
at  all  times  a  few  people  are  liable  to  be  in 
that  stage  —  though  not  perhaps  to  so  pro- 
nounced a  degree.  These  are  they  who  pursue 
knowledge  for  its  own  sake  and  are  able  to 


AIMS  AND  LIMITATIONS  129 

regard  it  as  an  end  in  itself,  just  as  others 
pursue  and  deify  Art.  Theirs  is  an  instructive 
and  energizing  and  strenuous  belief,  which  has 
practical  results  and  is  not  by  any  means  to  be 
despised  —  as  some  who  profess  a  broader  view 
are  liable  to  despise  it, —  and  yet  it  is  not  a 
permanently  satisfying  attitude,  nor  one  that 
will  stand  the  test  of  time  or  the  stress  of 
trouble. 

A  motive  power  such  belief  is:  not  a  firm 
foundation.  For  maturer  reason  cannot  but 
show  that  the  welfare  and  progress  of  man  must 
be  the  real  end  and  aim  of  knowledge,  as  of 
everything  else  with  which  we  are  concerned, — 
however  little  such  welfare  is  obviously  pro- 
moted by  any  given  fact,  and  however  ad- 
mittedly crude  and  useless  it  is  to  worry  the 
discoverer  or  the  explorer  with  the  question 
cui  bono.  This  is  a  question  to  which  neither 
he  nor  any  one  else  can  reply,  and  which 
ought  not  to  be  asked.  He  is  right  to  trust 
his  instinct  and  pursue  the  truth  wherever  it 
may  lead. 

Nevertheless  it  must  be  maintained  that 
human  welfare  is  the  ultimate  end  and  aim 
of  everything  with  which  we  have  to  do;  and 


130  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

that  such  welfare,  in  the  highest  sense,  may  be 
promoted  by  many  things  beside  intellectual 
study  of  Nature.  "We  do  not  live  by  scientific 
bread  alone ;  '  we  live  by  admiration,  hope,  and 
love.' 

'  So  if  a  poet  tells  us  that  a  vision  of  beauty 
or  some  simple  everyday  occurrence,  even  so 
simple  la  thing  as  the  unpremeditated  song  of 
a  bird,  has  the  power  of  raising  the  human 
heart  to  the  perception  of  Divine  things, —  if 
he  asserts  that  such  things  are  of  more  value 
to  some  natures  than  the  profoundest  re- 
searches, and  perhaps  that  in  such  natures  they 
accomplish  more  than  any  intellectual  striving 
or  brilliant  discovery  can  achieve  in  any  per- 
son whatever, —  it  is  open  to  experience  of  life 
to  demonstrate  or  to  disprove  the  truth  of  such 
a  statement. 

Not  in  me,  indeed,  is  the  sensitiveness  to 
such  influence  developed;  yet  by  sympathy  I 
can  partially  understand,  and  I  would  call 
,  other  scientific  students  to  understand  and 
admit,  first,  that  the  uplifting  of  the  spirit  of 
man  is  the  highest  claim  that  can  be  made  for 
any  study,  any  action,  any  emotion, —  while 
the  fact  that  it  achieves  such  uplifting  is  its 


I  AIMS  AND  LIMITATIONS  131 

bighest  tribute,  its  perfect  justification;  and 
secondly,  that  for  others  —  though  perhaps 
not  for  themselves  —  channels  of  Divine  grace 
may  be  dependent  upon  refined  feeling  rather 
than  upon  recondite  knowledge,  and  that  a  mes- 
sage such  as  that  conveyed  to  Keats  by  the 
song  of  a  thrush  —  however  little  it  appeals 
to  them,  and  however  wise  they  may  be  in  pur- 
suing the  path  dictated  by  their  own  God-im- 
planted instincts  —  yet  may  represent  a  worthy 
and  a  fruitful  mood. 

'  Oh  fret  not  after  knowledge.     I  have  none, 
And  yet  my  song  comes  native  vsdth  the  warmth. 
Oh  fret  not  after  knowledge!    I  have  none, 
And  yet  the  Evening  listens.' 


CHAPTER  n 

THE   USE   OF   HYPOTHESES 

IN  the  preceding  chapter  I  have  addressed 
my  colleagues  in  science,  but  I  have  some- 
thing to  say  to  men  of  letters  also.  A  question 
has  from  time  to  time  been  raised  as  to  the 
legitimacy  of  certain  methods  in  scientific  pro- 
cedure, especially  as  to  the  legitimacy  of  hy- 
pothesis, i.  e.,  of  theory  suggested  and  supported 
though  not  yet  fully  established  by  fact ;  and  it 
has  even  been  suggested  that  in  some  cases 
the  personal  predilections  of  an  explorer  have 
been  a  more  efficient  guide  than  legitimate  in- 
dications. There  are  in  fact  literary  critics 
who  either  have  objected,  or  who  show  signs 
of  being  ready  to  object,  to  the  use  of  working 
hypotheses  as  unscientific ;  —  not  apparently 
being  aware  of  the  ordinary  procedure  of  a 
scientific  investigator  in  a  new  field.  Such  hy- 
potheses,—  set  forth  to  be  scrutinised  severely 
from  all  sides,  retained  only  in  so  far  as  they 

132 


THE  USE  OF  HYPOTHESES  133 

survive  the  early  tests,  and  discarded  as  soon 
as  facts  are  forthcoming  which  seriously  and 
not  merely  superficially  discredit  them, —  are 
the  necessary  thread  on  which  facts  are  linked, 
the  connecting  mechanism  by  which  they  are 
treated  as  a  coherent  whole  instead  of  a  loose 
and  incomprehensible  jumble.  Such  hypothe- 
ses are  part  of  our  working  tools,  and  when 
one  of  them  has  shown  itself  superior  to  all 
others,  it  is  put  forth  as  a  tentative  theory,  to 
be  enlarged  and  modified  as  experience  pro- 
ceeds. 

For  instance,  when  dealing  with  the  history 
of  the  physical  aspect  of  the  Atomic  Theory 
in  Chemistry,  the  Lucasian  Professor  of  Mathe- 
matics in  the  University  of  Cambridge  ^  writes 
thus  concerning  the  theory  of  Dalton :  — 

"  In  all  fundamental  advances,  the  result  attained  is  not 
BO  much  the  vindication  of  any  inflexible  experimental 
fact,  as  the  introduction  of  an  abstract  guiding  principle 
into  the  science,  fortified  of  course  by  expeiimental  sup- 
port." 

And  after  developing  this  in  some  detail  he 
continues  in  general  and  weighty  terms :  — 

iPj.ofessor  Sir  Joseph  Larmor  in  his  Wilde  Lecture  at  Man- 
chester,  1908. 


134  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

"While  theory  is  aimless  and  impotent  without  experi- 
mental check,  experiment  is  dead  without  some  theory  pass- 
ing beyond  the  limits  of  ascertained  knowledge  to  control 
it.  Here,  as  in  all  parts  of  natural  knowledge,  the  im- 
mediate presumption  is  strongly  in  favour  of  the  simplest 
hypothesis  J  'the  main  support,  the  unfailing  clue,  of 
physical  science  is  the  principle  that,  nature  being  a  ra- 
tional cosmos,  phenomena  are  related  on  the  whole  ia,  the 
manner  that  reason  would  anticipate." 

Such  a  pronouncement  supports  the  claim,  in- 
evitably though  often  tacitly  made,  that  the 
coherent  anticipations  —  the  inspirations  and 
even  the  surmises  —  of  men  of  genius  are 
of  value  to  an  explorer,  and  are  among  the 
phenomena  of  nature  which  he  will  be  well  ad- 
vised not  wholly  to  ignore.  Indeed  he  is  justi- 
fied in  attempting  to  utilise  them  in  whatever 
way  is  suggested  by  his  own  instinct. 

And  having  adopted  a  working  hypothesis  as 
a  clue  it  must  be  pertinaciously  followed  up  and 
tested  in  every  possible  way.  To  give  up  a  view 
too  lightly,  and  at  the  bidding  of  every  super- 
ficially hostile  fact,  would  be  childish.  Every 
such  fact  must  be  scrutinised  and  its  value  as- 
certained, no  such  fact  must  be  burked  oe 
slurred  over.  If  it  is  weak  and  valueless,  scru- 
tiny will  reveal  the  weakness, —  will  reveal  ver^ 


THE  USE  OF  HYPOTHESES  135 

likely  that  what  at  first  looked  hostile  is  really 
in  favour  of  the  tested  hypothesis,  when  prop- 
erly understood. 

So  it  has  been,  often  and  often,  in  the  history 
of  science  some  small  perturbation  or  outstand- 
ing error  —  let  us  say  in  the  motion  of  the 
moon  —  has  seemed  before  now  to  throw  sus- 
picion on  the  accuracy  of  the  law  of  gravitation, 
and  to  discredit  predictions  based  on  that  law; 
but  by  taking  into  account  another  perturbing 
circumstance,  or  some  terms  in  a  mathematical 
series  which  had  been  too  hastily  ignored,  or 
some  other  neglected  fact  which  did  not  lie 
on  the  surface, —  facts  which  it  took  some  pains 
and  penetration  to  bring  to  light,  and  of  which 
the  critical  objectors  were  ignorant, —  the  law 
has  been  confirmed,  even  by  the  facts  which  at 
first  seemed  hostile ;  —  and  so,  in  the  long  run, 
after  passing  through  the  gauntlet  of  criticism 
it  has  been  established  almost  beyond  cavil.  A 
philosopher  who  had  stuck  to  his  working  hy- 
pothesis for  years,  in  face  of  the  outstanding 
difficulty,  because  he  felt  that  all  the  major 
arguments  were  on  his  side, —  that  they  outbal- 
anced the  minor  objections,  and  therefore  that 
he  could  bide  his  time  and  hold  his  judgment  in 


136  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

suspense  concerning  the  hostile  facts  until  they 
had  been  thoroughly  explored, —  that  philoso- 
pher would  in  the  end  be  abundantly  justified. 
Hypotheses  before  now  have  been  abandoned 
prematurely,  and  have  had  to  be  returned  to 
by  another  generation.  There  are  hard  and 
difficult  cases  in  science,  and  sometimes  what 
seems  like  obstinacy  is  justifiable;  though  a 
more  pliant  mind  is  usually  a  safer,  and  always 
a  pleasanter  and  more  popular,  attitude. 

But  to  say  that  a  scientific  man  puts  forth 
a  theory,  and  supports  it  and  adheres  to  it,  not 
because  he  thinks  it  true  but  because  he  wishes 
it  to  be  true,  is  the  same  thing  as  saying  that 
he  is  not  a  seeker  after  truth  at  all,  and  is 
therefore  a  traitor  to  his  profession.  It  is  (as 
I  have  said  elsewhere)  equivalent  to  accusing 
a  Judge  of  prejudice  or  a  Trustee  of  peculation. 
It  may  be  lamentably  necessary  to  make  such 
an  accusation  sometimes,  but  it  should  be  made 
in  a  serious  and  responsible  manner  and  not  in 
the  ordinary  spirit  of  miscellaneous  journalism 
or  casual  conversation. 


THE  USE  OF  HYPOTHESES  137 

ILLUSTEATIONS  OF   SCIENTIFIC   METHOD 

The  popular  prejudice  concerning  scientific 
method  is  that  bare  facts  alone  are  to  be 
scrutinised,  without  any  clue  or  guide,  until  the 
true  theory  appears.  "Whether  such  a  pro- 
cedure is  desirable  or  not  is  hardly  worth  dis- 
cussing, for  in  a  matter  of  any  complexity  it 
is  impossible;  in  fact  it  is  probably  really  and 
essentially  impossible  even  in  the  simplest  case. 
No  hypothesis  is  really  a  part  of  the  facts; 
each  has  first  to  be  invented,  and  then  critically 
examined.^ 

1  The  following  sentence  accidentally  catches  my  eye  in  aia 
article  by  a  writer  on  Radium.  The  particular  subject  is  un- 
important for  present  purposes.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  it  con- 
cerns the  identity  of  the  immediate  "  Parent  of  Radium,"  aa 
well  as  the  already  partially  known  remoter  ancestry,  and  the 
better  known  descendants,  of  that  important  substance;  which 
is  itself  an  intermediate  element  in  a  notable  series  of  trans- 
mutations or  disintegrations.  Uranium  is  probably,  though 
not  yet  certainly,  its  great-grandparent.  Actinium  is  possibly 
its  grandparent,  while  its  immediate  parent  —  not  yet  named 
or  securely  identified  —  might  easily  have  been  mistaken  for 
Thorium,  because  to  chemical  tests  it  is  very  like  that  sub- 
stance; but  a  theoretical  clue  pointed  away  from  that  identifi- 
cation—  Thorium  seems  to  belong  to  a  different  family, —  and 
consequently  the  experiments  were  scrutinised  severely  and  the 
error  avoided.     Had  it  not  been  so,  Mr.  Soddy  says, 

"  A  serious  error  would  have  thus  crept  into  the  subject 
and  might  possibly  have  caused  endless  confusion  before 


138  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

But  even  when  hypotheses  are  '  given  '  ready- 
made,  or  are  obvious  so  that  no  invention  is 
necessary,  tentative  discrimination  between  al- 
ternative plausibilities  is  necessary  to  progress. 
How  is  anyone  to  choose  between  two  alter- 
native roads  —  literal  roads  —  except  by  first 
speculatively  deciding  that  one  of  them  is  most 
probably  right,  and  then  putting  it  to  the  test! 
A  few  steps  along  it  may  show  that  the  guess 
was  wrong,  and  in  that  case  the  steps  will  be 
retraced;  but  unless  something  is  done,  the 
traveller  may  stand  at  the  fork  of  the  roads 
for  hours,  in  sheer  helplessness. 

It  is  evidently  thought  that  to  put  one  hy- 
pothesis forward  as  the  most  likely,  and  to  fol- 
low it  for  a  time  to  see  where  it  will  lead,  is  to 
give  it  an  unfair  advantage  and  to  show  repre- 
hensible credulity.  But  that  is  not  so.  To  put 
a  hypothesis  forward  is  to  subject  it  to  attack, 
while  the  others  lurk  in  the  rear,  screened  for 

being  put  right.  As  [it  was]  however  .  .  .  this  error 
was  fortunately  avoided.  This  furnishes  an  argument  for 
the  advantages  of  having  a  theory  to  guide  the  investi- 
gator. The  disintegration  theory  indicated  a  genetic  con- 
nection between  uranium  and  radium  but  none  between 
thorium  and  radium.  Sometimes  of  course  the  argument 
is  the  other  way;  it  is  useful  occasionally  to  discard  the 
blinkers  of  theory  and  to  look  round  fancy-free." 


THE  USE  OF  HYPOTHESES  139 

a  time  from  criticism  and  making  stronger  their 
position,  in  case  the  adventurous  pioneer,  find- 
ing himself  baffled,  returns  to  his  base, — 
thereby  leaving  the  once  prominent  but  now 
discarded  hypothesis  to  the  mercy  of  the  foe. 

People  seem  to  think  that  when  a  working 
hypothesis  is  being  tested,  every  argument  in 
its  favour  will  receive  undue  weight,  while 
everything  that  can  tell  against  it  will  be 
shirked.  Human  nature  is  fallible,  and  occas- 
ional weakness  or  partiality  may  have  to  be  ad- 
mitted in  some  cases  for  a  time, — ^*'  sometimes 
one  may  err  on  the  side  of  partiality  sometimes 
on  the  side  of  impartiality,'*  as  an  apocryphal 
civic  magnate  is  reported  to  have  said, —  but 
there  exists  no  real  seeker  after  truth  who 
would  not  admit  that  an  attitude  of  unreason- 
ing prejudice,  if  really  persisted  in  the  face  of 
facts,  is  folly,  as  well  as  treason  to  truth. 

Truth  seems  to  be  looming  ahead  only  when 
every  new  fact,  every  turn  in  the  road,  seems 
to  bear  in  the  right  direction,  seems  to  lead 
nearer  the  goal.  Then  the  explorer  proceeds, 
encouraged,  and  in  his  forward  march  may 
sometimes  be  rightly  deaf  to  the  warnings  of 
followers  from  behind,  who,  not  having  travelled 


140  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

so  far  along  his  road,  cannot  see  so  much  of 
the  way,  and  are  more  enamoured  of  some  of 
the  other  routes  to  which  friends  are  calling 
them. 

To  say  that  in  a  difficult  enquiry  hypotheses 
are  not  to  be  made,  or  not  to  be  tested, —  to  say 
that  no  one  hypothesis  is  to  be  put  forward  and 
subjected  to  the  scathing  fire  of  criticism, — 
is  as  stupid  as  it  would  be  to  expect  any  one 
to  solve  a  dissected  puzzle  by  merely  looking  at 
the  jumble  of  pieces  laid  out  plainly  for  inspec- 
tion, without  handling  and  trying  to  fit  them 
into  supposed  places.  A  bundle  of  discon- 
nected facts  is  only  the  raw  material  for  an  in- 
yestigation:  their  mere  collection  is  the  very 
earliest  stage  in  the  process;  and  even  while 
collecting  them  there  is  nearly  always  some 
system,  some  plan,  some  idea  under  trial.  The 
puzzles  set  us  by  nature  are  not  sorted  out 
neatly  into  boxes,  each  guaranteed  complete  in 
itself;  but  the  contents  of  several  boxes  may 
be  mixed. 

In  selecting  a  working  hypothesis  we  must 
proceed  by  trial  and  error.  To  try  one  clue 
obstinately,  to  be  blind  to  every  other,  to  listen 
to  no  reason,  is  akin  to  lunacy.    To  try  several, 


THE  USE  OF  HYPOTHESES  141 

and  at  last  to  perceive  the  probabilities  in 
favour  of  one  of  them,  to  pursue  that  one  into 
all  its  consequences  and  ramifications  till  it  is 
either  verified  or  discredited, —  that  is  scientific 
procedure.  Let  no  one  suppose  that  this  ex- 
hausts scientific  procedure.  It  is  the  right 
procedure  in  a  new  and  unknown  field;  it  was 
the  method  of  Kepler,  and  it  served  as  the 
foundation  on  which  a  rigorous  demonstration 
could  be  subsequently  built.  It  is  the  right 
method  for  a  science  at  an  early  stage  in  its 
history,  it  is  not  the  method  appropriate  to 
deduction  from  known  laws,  nor  is  it  the  method 
of  analysis  and  subsequent  synthesis  initiated 
by  Newton.  There  are  subjects  in  a  stage  at 
which  this  latter  process  is  applicable;  and 
there  are  subjects  not  yet  ripe  for  that  kind 
of  treatment.  These  last  have  to  be  treated  by 
hypothesis  based  upon  and  tested  by  experi- 
ment. The  Newtonian  era  in  psychical  science 
has  not  yet  dawned. 

It  is  sometimes  thought  that  Newton  never 
employed  any  method  but  that  of  analysis  and 
synthesis,  or  induction  and  deduction.  These 
were  indeed  his  favourite  tools,  for  he  was  work- 
ing at  the  foundation  of  Natural  Philosophy, 


142  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

and  the  subject  was  tractable  in  this  way  by 
his  astounding  genius, —  but  he  by  no  means 
disdained  the  aid  of  other  methods  when  the 
first  were  inapplicable;  and  the  other  method 
he  regarded  as  preparing  the  ground  for  subse- 
quent treatment  by  more  rigorous  processes, — 
as  shall  be  evidenced  by  quotation. 

I  select  the  following  illustrative  sentences 
from  the  third  book  of  the  Principia;  begin- 
ning with  a  surmise  about  the  internal  heat  of 
the  earth. 

"The  hieat  (calor)  of  boiling  water  is  about  3  limes 
greater  than  the  heat  which  dry  earth  acquires  from  the 
Bummer-sun,  as  I  have  tried;  and  the  heat  of  red  hot  iron 
(if  my  conjecture  is  right,  si  reete  conjector)  is  about  three 
or  four  times  greater  than  the  heat  of  boiling  water." 

^  (Parenthetically  we  may  notice  that  the  latter 
statement,  based  on  conjecture,  is  — ■  if  the  word 
calor  be  translated  **  absolute  temperature,"  a 
phrase  that  could  not  have  been  used  in  New- 
ton's day^ — much  nearer  the  truth  than  the 
statement  preceding  it,  which  is  supposed  to 
have  been  ascertained  by  observation.) 

After  speaking  of  the  cooling  of  sundry 
moderate  sized  iron  globes^  he  continueSj,^« 


THE  USE  OF  HYPOTHESES  143 

'A  globe  of  red  hot  iron  equal  to  our  earth,  that  is, 
about  40,000,000  feet  in  diameter,  would  scarcely  cool  in 
.  .  .  above  50,000  years.  But  I  suspect  (suspicor 
tamen)  that  the  duration  of  the  heat  may,  on  account  of 
some  latent  causes,  increase  in  a  yet  less  proportion  than 
that  of  the  diameter;  and  I  should  be  glad  that  the  true 
proportion  was  investigated  by  experiments.' 

The  meaning  is  obscure,  but  it  seems  to  point 
to  a  suspicion  that  something  other  than  mere 
conduction  of  heat  may  control  the  cooling  of 
the  earth  —  a  suspicion,  if  it  existed,  which 
modern  discovery  has  strangely  justified. 

The  phenomena  of  comets'  tails,  so  well  de- 
scribed and  illustrated  by  diagrams  in  the  Prin- 
cipia,  was  a  very  appropriate  subject  for  hy- 
pothesis :  —  so,  after  adducing  those  of  Kepler 
and  others  he  indicates  his  own  surmise  that  the 
ascent  of  the  tails  of  comets  from  their  heads 
proceeds  from  the  rarefaction  of  the  matter  of 
the  comets'  tails,  like  the  rise  of  smoke  from  a 
chimney.  And  then  he  goes  on  to  a  very  curi- 
ous speculation  that  the  tails  of  comets  may 
supply  the  earth's  atmosphere  with  some  in- 
gredient which  is  important  and  which  would 
otherwise  be  lacking.  We  cannot  say  for  cer- 
tain that  there  is  no  sort  of  truth  in  this,  even 


144  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

now ;  though  the  ingredient  is  certainly  not  what 
we  now  call  oxygen,  and  though  the  necessary 
recuperation  of  the  atmosphere  damaged  by 
animal  life  was  proved  later,  by  Joseph 
Priestly,  to  be  effected  by  vegetation  and  sun- 
light. 

This  is  what  Newton  says, — < 

'It  seems  reasonable  {rationi  consentaneunt  videtur) 
that  the  vapour  [of  comets'  tails],  thus  perpetually  rare- 
fied and  dilated,  may  be  at  last  dissipated  and  scattered 
through  the  whole  heavens,  and  be  gradually  attracted 
towards  the  planets  by  its  gravity,  and  mixed  with  their 
atmosphere;  for  as  the  seas  are  absolutely  necessary  to 
the  constitution  of  our  earth  ...  so  for  the  con- 
Bervation  of  the  seas  and  fluids  of  the  planets  comets 
seem  to  be  required.  ^  .  ..  I  suspect,  moreover,  that 
it  is  chiefly  from  comets  that  that  spirit  comes  which  is 
indeed  the  smallest  but  the  most  subtle  and  useful  part 
of  our  air,  and  so  much  required  to  sustain  the  life  of 
all  things  with  us.* 

So,  clearly,  whenever  hypothesis  were  ap- 
propriate Newton  did  not  hesitate  to  make  them. 
Indeed  gravitation  itself  was  originally  an 
hypothesis  —  a  guess,  a  flash  of  insight,  in  his 
mind;  though  the  fact  that  an  attracting  force 
of  some  kind,  varying  as  the  inverse  square  of 
the  distance  from  the  sun,  was  acting  on  all 


THE  USE  OF  HYPOTHESES  145 

the  planets,  could  be  demonstrated  quite  easily 
by  Kepler's  third  law.  (The  same  deduction 
for  any  one  planet,  from  the  first  law  or  shape 
of  its  orbit,  is  not  so  simple;  nor  is  it  so 
general.  The  deduction  from  the  second  law 
about  equable  description  of  areas,  that  they  are 
acted  on  by  a  force  directed  to  the  sun,  is  easy 
and  rigorous.) 

A  pure  Mathematician  has  told  me,  what  I 
should  certainly  have  expected,  that  even  purely 
mathematical  theorems  are  not  arrived  at  in 
the  first  instance  by  a  method  of  demonstra- 
tion. They  arise  in  the  mind  as  a  flash,  an 
idea,  an  inspiration;  and  much  subsequent 
labour  may  be  necessary  before  they  are  es- 
tablished and  rigorously  proved.  Sometimes 
indeed  the  attainment  of  a  complete  proof  is  the 
work  of  generations. 

Newton  had  an  extraordinary  faculty  for 
guessing  correctly,  sometimes  with  no  apparent 
data, —  as  for  instance  his  intuition  that  the 
mean  density  of  the  earth  was  probably  between 
5  and  6  times  that  of  water ;  while  we  now  know 
it  is  really  about  5i/^, —  and  he  concludes  his 
*'  Optics  "  with  a  whole  string  of  sagacious 
Queries,  every  one  of  which  is  an  untested  or 


146  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

incompletely  tested  hypothesis  or  speculation. 
Some  of  these  were  sheer  guesses,  such  as  were 
not  likely  for  a  long  time  to  be  put  to  the  test 
of  experiment, —  many  of  them  indeed  not  so 
tested  even  yet. 

Qu.  5.  Do  not  Bodies  and  Light  act  mutually  upon  one 
another;  that  is  to  say,  Bodies  upon  Light,  in  emitting,  re- 
flecting, refracting  and  inflecting  it;  and  Light  upon 
Bodies,  for  heating  them,  and  putting  their  hearts  into  a 
vibrating  motion  wherein  heat  consists'? 

Qu.  29.  Are  not  the  Rays  of  Light  very  small  Bodies 
emitted  from  shining  Substances?  For  such  Bodies  will 
pass  through  uniform  Mediums  in  right  Lines  without 
bending  into  the  Shadow,  which  is  the  Nature  of  the 
Rays  of  Light.    .    .    . 

Qu.  31.  Have  not  the  small  Particles  of  Bodies  certain 
Powers,  Virtues,  or  Forces,  by  which  they  act  at  a  dis- 
tance, not  only  upon  the  Rays  of  Light  for  reflecting,  re- 
fracting and  inflecting  them,  but  also  upon  one  another  for 
producing  a  great  Part  of  the  Phenomena  of  Nature! 

•        •        • 

But  because  the  method  by  speculation  had 
been  needlessly  prominent  in  the  past,  even  in 
Natural  Philosophy,  and  because  he  now  per- 
ceived that  in  such  comparatively  simple  or 
well-worn  subjects  as  the  Foundation  of  Me- 
chanics and  the  motion  of  the  heavenly  bodies 


THE  USE  OF  HYPOTHESES  147 

there  was  a  more  excellent  way,  he  deeply  re- 
sented the  idea  that  in  his  beautiful  mathe- 
matical inductions  and  deductions  he  was  merely 
making  haphazard  guesses,  with  the  idea  of 
subsequently  confirming  them.  He  considered 
his  theory  absolutely  established  by  fact,  and 
he  deduced  from  his  theory  more  fact,  which 
likewise  he  considered  absolutely  established; 
subject  only  to  the  risk  of  error  or  oversight. 
He  would  probably  have  admitted  that  by  rea- 
son of  this  risk  they  still  needed  to  be 
thoroughly  tested  and  confirmed  by  detailed  ex- 
perience,—  like  all  other  results  of  human 
reasoning. 

In  the  course  of  this  work,  or  rather  at  the 
conclusion  of  its  more  rigorous  and  mathe- 
matical portion,  he  interjected  that  much  mis- 
understood and  misapplied  sentence,  *'  Hypo- 
theses non  fingo;  '* — a  sentence  which  is  often 
interpreted  as  implying  that  he  denied  to  him- 
self the  right  of  making  hypotheses.  As  if  he 
had  said  ''  Hypotheses  I  do  not  make,"  or  "  I 
never  make." 

If  he  had  said  this,  it  would  have  been  a 
transparent  falsehood,  too  absurd  for  such  a 
misconception  of  his  meaning  to  be  even  sus- 


148  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

pected  by  him.  What  he  meant  and  what  he 
said  was  **  I  am  not  making  hypotheses  " — 
meaning  that  they  would  be  out  of  place  then 
and  in  that  connexion  —  I  am  deducing  theo- 
rems by  logically  accurate  and  severe  methods, 
—  we  may  imagine  him  saying  —  and  expound- 
ing them  in  strict  synthetic  form.  Do  not  run 
away  with  the  notion  that  these  are  guesses. 
I  am  laying  down  the  Principles  of  Natural 
Philosophy  in  mathematical  and  exact  fashion, 
welding  things  together  into  one  coherent 
whole,  making  an  exact  mechanical  scheme 
which  I  will  shortly  apply  in  my  concluding 
volume  to  "  The  System  of  the  World." 
Hypotheses,  in  what  I  am  now  doing,  would  be 
unnecessary  and  out  of  place;  and  in  a  more 
perfect  state  of  knowledge  they  may  cease  to 
be  necessary  altogether. 

*'  For  all  the  difficulty  of  philosophy  seems 
to  consist  in  this  —  from  the  phenomena  of 
motions  to  investigate  the  forces  of  nature,  and 
from  these  forces  to  demonstrate  other  pheno- 
mena; "...  and  I  would  that  it  were 
possible  to  deal  with  all  other  parts  of  Nature 
in  the  same  way,  and  to  derive  all  other  phenom- 
ena by  reasoning  from  mechanical  principles; 


THE  USE  OF  HYPOTHESES  149 

**  for  I  am  induced  by  many  reasons  to  suspect 
that  they  may  all  depend  upon  certain  forces 
by  which  the  particles  of  bodies,  by  some  causes 
hitherto  unknown,  are  either  mutually  impelled 
together  so  as  to  cohere  in  regular  figures  or 
are  repelled  and  driven  apart  "... 

This  is  an  expansion  of  Newton's  phrase 
Hypotheses  non  fingo,  interpreted  in  the  light 
of  other  parts  of  his  work. 

And  as  a  further  illustration  of  some  of  the 
hypotheses  which  we  find,  even  in  the  Principia 
itself,  concerning  things  which  could  not  at  that 
time  be  demonstrated  or  dealt  with  by  mathe- 
matical methods,  I  will  instance  two, —  one  con- 
cerning the  Ether  of  Space,  and  one  concern- 
ing God. 

Concerning  the  Ether,  his  statement  runs  in 
this  style :  — 

*And  now  we  might  add  something  concerning  a  cer- 
tain most  subtle  Spirit  which  pervades  and  lies  hid  in 
all  gross  bodies;  by  the  force  and  action  of  which  Spirit 
the  particles  of  bodies  mutually  attract  one  another  at 
near  distances,  and  cohere,  if  contiguous;  and  electric 
bodies  operate  to  greater  distances,  as  well  repelling  as 
attracting  the  neighbouring  corpuscles;  and  light  is  emit- 
ted, reflected,  refracted,  inflected,  and  heats  bodies;  and 


150  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

all  sensation  is  excited,  and  the  members  of  animal  bodies 
move  at  the  command  of  the  will,  namely,  by  the  vibra- 
tions of  this  Spirit,  mutually  propagated  along  the  solid 
filaments  of  the  nerves,  from  the  outward  organs  of  sense 
to  the  brain,  and  from  the  brain  into  the  muscles.  But 
these  are  thmgs  that  cannot  be  explained  in  few  words, 
nor  are  we  furnished  with  that  sufficiency  of  experiments 
which  is  required  to  an  accurate  determination  and  dem- 
onstration of  the  laws  by  which  this  electric  and  elastic 
Spirit  operates.* 

Finally,  his  statement  concerning  tlie  Deity; 
runs  thus :  — 

'And  from  his  true  dominion  it  follows  that  the  true 
God  is  a  living,  intelligent  and  powerful  Being;  and,  from 
his  other  perfections,  that  he  is  supreme,  or  most  perfect. 
He  is  eternal  and  infinite,  omnipotent  and  omniscient  j 
that  is,  his  duration  reaches  from  eternity  to  eternity; 
his  presence  from  infinity  to  infinity;  he  governs  all  things, 
and  knows  all  things  that  are  or  can  be  done.  He  is  not 
eternity  or  infinity,  but  eternal  and  infinite;  he  is  not  dura- 
tion or  space,  but  he  endures  and  is  present.  He  endures 
for  ever,  and  is  every  where  present;  and  by  existing  al- 
ways and  every  where,  he  constitutes  duration  and  space. 
Since  every  particle  of  space  is  always,  and  every  indi- 
visible moment  of  duration  is  every  where,  certainly  the 
Maker  and  Lord  of  all  things  cannot  be  never  and  no 
where.  Every  soul  that  has  perception  is,  though  in  dif- 
ferent times   and  in   different  organs  of  sense  and  mo- 


THE  USE  OF  HYPOTHESES  151 

tion,  still  the  same  indivisible  person.  There  are  given 
successive  parts  in  duration,  co-existent  parts  in  space, 
but  neither  the  one  nor  the  other  in  the  person  of  a  man, 
or  his  thinking  principle;  and  much  less  can  they  be 
found  in  the  thinking  substance  of  God.  Eveiy  man, 
so  far  as  he  is  a  thing  that  has  perception,  is  one  and  the 
same  man  during  his  whole  life,  in  all  and  each  of  his 
organs  of  sense.  God  is  the  same  God,  always  and  every 
where.* 

Hence  as  a  Physicist,  justifying  his  pro- 
cedure as  far  as  may  be  by  the  example  of 
Newton,  I  think  it  not  inappropriate  to  reach 
beyond  the  range  of  the  physical  and  demon- 
strable, to  a  region  where  experience  gained  in 
those  departments  of  knowledge  may  be  genu- 
inely serviceable.  And  although  strict  and  posi- 
tive certainty  is  as  yet  unattainable,  and  pos- 
sibly may  remain  unattainable  for  centuries  in 
the  future  as  it  has  already  been  through  the 
ages  of  the  past,  yet  some  approximation  to 
the  truth  may  be  gradually  made  by  utilising 
every  indication  and  stretching  our  human 
faculties  to  the  utmost. 


CHAPTER  in 

THE   APPEAL   TO   LITEEATURE 

REVIEWERS  may  admit  the  right  of  a 
student  of  Science  to  survey  the  facts 
which  have  come  under  his  scrutiny,  and  from 
their  contemplation  to  formulate  a  theory 
which  to  him  appears  most  likely  to  be  true; 
they  may  also  allow  him  the  right  to  state 
it  in  such  a  way  that  it  can  be  understood, 
without  at  the  same  time  constantly  protrud- 
ing technical  details, —  which  are  best  left  to 
be  studied  in  the  publications  of  scientific 
societies.  All  this  they  might  admit,  and  yet 
contend  that  he  had  no  right  to  quote  poets 
or  men  of  letters  in  support  of  his  hypothesis. 
*  You  may  hold  an  atomic  theory  ' —  such 
critics  might  be  supposed  to  say — '  but  you 
must  not  quote  Lucretius.  You  may  hold  a 
view  concerning  Oracles,  but  must  not  quote 
Virgil.  Or  an  opinion  about  Immortality,  but 
must  not  quote  Tennyson  or  Wordsworth.' 

152 


THE  APPEAL  TO  LITERATURE        153 

If  that  contention  is  ever  urged,  I  demur  to 
the  conclusion,  though  not  to  the  spirit  in  which 
it  is  conceived. 

What  is  true  is  that  the  utterances  of  poets 
are  not  part  of  the  facts  that  can  be  appealed 
to  in  support  of  a  thesis, —  except  in  so  far 
as  their  evident  reasonableness  carries  with 
them  a  conviction  of  truth.  Nevertheless  the 
intuitions  of  genius  must  not  be  ignored. 
There  are  facts  relating  to  human  nature,  and 
to  the  relation  between  man  and  the  rest  of  the 
Universe,  concerning  which  poets  and  prophets 
—  humanists,  in  fact,  in  the  widest  sense  — 
are  the  best  and  indeed  almost  the  only 
guides.  To  them  seem  to  come  whisperings 
which  have  been  likened  to  the  murmur  of  a 
shell  held  to  the  ear  of  a  child, —  reverbera- 
tions and  intensifications  of  sounds  too  faint 
for  the  unaided  ear. 

*  Even  such  a  shell  the  universe  itself 
Is  to  the  ear  of  faith;  and  there  are  times 
I  doubt  not,  when  to  you  it  doth  impart 
Authentic  tidings  of  invisible  things.' 

The  sanction  for  their  statements  and  de- 
ductions is  to  be  found  in  the  hearer's  own 
experience  and  consciousness;  and  the  perfect 


154  THE  SCOPE  OF  SCIENCE 

form  in  which  their  utterances  are  enshrined  is 
of  the  utmost  value  in  securing  or  arousing  gen- 
eral attention. 

Moreover,  however  much  or  little  intrinsic 
yalue  their  opinions  may  possess,  they  at  least 
represent  the  views  of  previous  explorers  in 
the  domain  of  humanity.  And,  surely,  if  it  be 
found  that  previous  workers  were  on  the  right 
track,  and  have  given  utterance  to  statements 
which  you  subsequently  find  to  be  confirmed 
by  your  own  quite  different  and  independent 
investigations,  it  is  only  seemly  to  call  atten- 
tion to  their  rightness  and  inspiration.  In- 
deed, it  would  be  less  than  moral  to  refrain 
from  doing  so. 

If  it  be  urged  that  seers  are  not  scientific 
workers, —  that  they  employ  alien  methods, — 
I  agree  that  their  methods  are  different,  but 
not  that  they  are  alien.  Science,  in  a  narrow 
sense,  is  by  no  means  the  only  way  of  arriv- 
ing at  truth  —  especially  not  at  truth  con- 
cerning human  nature.  To  decline  to  be  in- 
formed by  the  great  seers  and  prophets  of 
the  past,  and  to  depend  solely  on  a  limited 
class  of  workers  such  as  have  been  bred  chiefly 
within  the  last  century  or  two,  would  savour 


THE  APPEAL  TO  LITERATURE        155 

of  a  pitiful  narrowness,  and  would  be  truly 
and  in  the  largest  sense  unscientific. 

The  insight  of  great  men  is  of  the  highest 
yalue;  and  though  selection  must  undoubtedly 
be  made,  and  though  only  those  are  quoted 
which  agree  with  the  thoughts  of  the  quoter, 
yet  that  is  exactly  what  is  done  with  the  work 
of  all  pioneers.  Those  who  are  supposed  to 
have  gone  wrong  are  eliminated  and  ignored; 
those  who  appear  to  have  gone  right  are 
selected  and  acclaimed.  Little  merit  there  is 
in  that  procedure,  nor  any  shame.  Truth  is 
large,  and  can  be  explored  by  many  avenues. 
All  honour  to  those  who,  with  insufficient  ex- 
perience but  with  the  inspiration  of  genius, 
caught  glimpses  of  a  larger  and  higher  truth 
than  was  known  to  the  age  in  which  they  lived, 
and  who  had  the  felicity  of  recording  their 
inspirations  in  musical  and  immortal  words; 
! —  words  such  as  the  worker  in  science  has  not 
at  his  command  —  words  at  which  he  rejoices 
when  he  encounters  them,  and  which  he  quotes 
because  they  have  given  him  pleasure. 

Let  this  serve  as  excuse  and  sufficient  justi- 
fication for  the  large  number  of  quotations 
already  utilized. 


EEFEEENCES  TO  QUOTATIONS 

The  following  references  may  be  convenient 
to  a  few  readers,  but  I  must  apologise  for  the 
obviousness  of  some  of  them.  In  a  previous 
book,  The  Substance  of  Faith,  wherein  I  gave 
a  page  of  similar  references,  I  abstained  from 
specifically  mentioning  quotations  from  the 
New  Testament, —  which  in  that  book  happened 
to  be  numerous, —  thinking  that  they  were  too 
well  known.  In  these  days,  however,  it  ap- 
pears that  no  such  assumption  is  safe;  and 
several  reviewers  asserted,  what  presumably 
appeared  to  them  to  be  a  fact,  that  while  pagan 
writers  and  the  Old  Testament  were  freely 
quoted,  the  New  Testament  was  never  referred 
to.  So  I  have  tried  to  guard  against  that  mis- 
apprehension. 


EEFERENCE  TO  QUOTATIONS 

Page 

7.  '  His  life  is  a  watch.'  Swinburne,  Atalanta  in  Caly- 

don.  ^ 

8.  'He  that  hath  found.'  Vaughan     (1621-1695)',     Be- 

yond the  Veil  (quoted  in 
Dr.  Ward's  English  Poets, 
vol.  ii.). 

9.  'To  drop  head  foremost.'      Tennyson,      In      Memorial, 

xxxiv. 

10.  'Eternal  form  shall  still      Tennyson,  InMemoriam,xlyu. 
divide.' 

10.  '  We     lose     ourselves    in  "  " 

light.' 

11.  *  I  am  not  what  I  have.'        Christina        Eossetti,        The 

Thread  of  Life. 

12.  *I  am  a  part  of  all  that      Tennyson,  Ulysses. 

1  have  met.' 

13.  '  Some  have  gleams.'  Tennyson,  Ancient  Sage. 

13.  '  Is  it  that  in  some  bright      Shelley,  Fragment. 

sphere.' 

14.  'Obstinate  questionings.'         Wordsworth,  Immortality. 

14.  '  For    oft    on    me    when      Tennyson,  Ancient  Sage. 
boy.' 

14.  *  Happy  those  early  days.'      Henry  Vaughan,  The  Retreat. 

15.  *  Surely    before    this    de-      Myers,  Hum.  Pers.,  ii.  289. 

scent.' 

15.  *  When  from  that  world.'       Myers,    Fragments   of   Pros9 

and  Poetry. 

157 


158 


REASON  AND  BELIEF 


Page 

16.  'Out  of  tlie  deep.' 

17.  *  So  rounds  he.' 

17.  'The  house  of  a  brute.' 

18.  'Hints  and  previsions.' 

18.  '  It    is    finished,    man    is 

made.' 

19.  'Through      such       fierce 

hours.' 

20.  *0h  dear  Spirit.' 

21.  '  Souls  shall  climb  fast' 

21.  'Full  lasting  is  the  song.' 

22.  'Earthly  house.' 

23.  •  But  he  forgets  the  days.' 

24.  'As  old  mythologies.' 

25.  'So     be     it:     there     no 

shade! ' 

25.  *  We  are  such  stuff.' 

26.  '  Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep.' 

27.  '  The  man  who  man  would 

be.' 

29.  'And  first  a  glimmering.' 

30.  '  Many  there  be.' 

31.  'Oh  who  is  he.' 

34.  '  But  when,  so  sad. 

35.  'The  second  man.' 

37.  '  And  so.  the  Word.' 

38.  'In  the  beginning.' 


Tennyson,  De  Profundis. 

Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  xlv. 

Tennyson,    By    an   Evolution- 
ist. 

Browning,   Paracelsus. 

Tennyson,     The     Making     of 
Man, 

Myers,  Fragments. 

Tennyson,  De  Profundis. 

Myers,  To  Tennyson. 

Meredith,  The  Thrush  in  Feb- 
ruary. 

2  Cor.  V.  I. 

Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  xliv. 

Tennyson,  Two  Voices. 

Tennyson,  In  Memoriam,  gdvi. 

Shakespeare,  Tempest. 
Wordsworth,  Immortality. 

Shelley. 

Myers,  Fragments. 
Milton,  Areopagitica. 
Wordsworth,  The  Prelude. 

Francis    Thompson,     In     2^0 

Strange  Land. 
1  Corinthians  xv.  47. 
In  Memoriam,  gcxyvi. 
Genesis  i.;  John,  i. 


REFERENCE  TO  QUOTATIONS  159 


Page 

40.  '  Lo  for  the  dawn.' 

40.  'The    earth     is     full     of 
darkness. 

40.  'Dark    is    the    world    to 

thee.' 

41.  '  And  lo,   Christ  walking 

on  the  water.' 

42.  *No  sudden  heaven.' 

42.  *  The  voices  of  the  day.' 

43.  '  Would  I  suffer.' 

45.  '  And  this  gray  spirit.' 

46.  '  Nay  but  she  aims  not  at 

glory.' 

46.  '  To    strive,    to    seek,    to 
find.' 

46.  'How  dull  it  is  to  pause.' 

47.  '  Oh  roughly  strongly.' 

47.  *  Before  the  beginning  of 

years.' 

48.  '  Such  devotion.* 

49.  '  Imaginations    calm    and 

fair.' 

60.  'The  path  we  came  by.' 

51.  'To   fill   up   what   is   be- 

hind.' 

52.  '  The  joy  of  their  lord.' 

52.  *  The    kingdom    prepared 
for  you.' 

52.  *A  beauty  with  defect.' 

53.  'Say  could  aught  else.* 


Myers,  St.  Paul. 

Psalm        Ixxiv.         (Anglican 
Prayer  Book). 

Tennyson,    The    Higher    Pan- 
theism. 

Francis     Thompson,     In     No 
Strange  Land. 

Tennyson,  The  Ring. 

te  <c 

Browning,  Saul. 
Tennyson,   Ulysses, 
Tennyson,  Wages. 

Tennyson,   Ulysses. 

tc  te 

Myers,  Renewal  of  Youth. 

Swinburne,  Atalanta  in  Culy- 
don. 

Myers,     Human    Personality, 
ii.  291. 

In  Memoriam  xciv. 

xlvi. 
Col.  i.  24. 

Matthevy  xxv.  21. 
Matthew  xxv.  34. 

Tennyson,  Ancient  Sage. 
Myers,  The  Renewal  of  Youth. 


160  REASON  AND  BELIEF 

Page 

56.  '  Eloi  Eloi.'  Psalm  xxii. 

56.  'Nay   but   thou   knewest      Myers,  St.  PoaiI. 

us.' 

57.  'Earthen  vessels.'  2  Cor.  iv.  7;  Judges  vii.  16. 

57.  'Oh     to     have     watched      Myers,  St.  Paul. 
thee.' 

57.  'All   things   that   I   have      John  Sev.  15. 

heard.' 

58.  'God     who     at     sundry      Hebrews  i. 

times.' 

60.  *  The    acceptable    year    of      Isaiah  Ixi. 
the  Lord.' 

60.  '  This   day  is   this   Scrip-      Luke  iv. 

ture.' 
61.'  *  I  that  speak  unto  thee.'       John  iv. 

63.  '  Soul  that  in  some  high      Myers,  Fragments. 

world.' 

64.  '  Behoved  it  not.'  Luke  xxiv. 
64.  '  Your  father  Abraham.'        John  viii. 

79.  'That  orb^d  maiden.'  Shelley,  The  Cloud. 

80.  '  What     when     the     sun      William  Blake. 

rises.' 

82.  '  Every  common  bush.'  E.  B.  Browning. 

87.  '  A  garden  is  a  lovesome       T.  E.  Brown,  My  Garden. 

thing.' 
94.  '  For  the  time  was  May-       Tennyson,  Idylls. 

time.' 
103.  '  The  far  off  interest  of      Tennyson,  In  Memoriam. 
tears.' 

106.  'I  form  the  light.'  Isaiah  xlv.  7. 

110.  'It  must  needs  be.'  Luke  xvii.  1;  Matt,  xviii.  7. 


REFERENCE  TO  QUOTATIONS         161 


Page 

113.  'Man  is  his  own  star.' 

121.  '  Nor  less  I  deem.' 

124.  '  Happy  is  he.' 

125.  *  Shall  men  for  whom.' 

126.  '  The  estate  of  man.' 

127.  'Has  not  the  soul.' 

127.  '  In     mystery     the     soul 
abides.' 

130.  '  We  live  by  admiration, 

hope  and  love.' 

131.  'Oh  fret  not  after  knowl- 

edge.' 
153.  'Even  such  a  shell.' 


Fletcher    (1579-1625). 

Wordsworth,       Expostulation 
and  Reply. 

Wordsworth,  Excursion  IV. 


M.  Arnold,  Morality. 
Wordsworth,  Excursion. 
Keats,  Fragment  in  a  letter. 
Wordsworth,  Excursion  IV. 


INDEX 


Abstraction,  81,  82. 
Accusations,  136. 
Adam,  30,  92. 
Advent,  35. 

Second,  41. 

Amnesia,  23,  56. 

Ancient  art  and  drama,  7( 

Angela,  33. 

Animal  ancestry,  17. 

'perception,  33,  78. 

Annihilation,  9,  107. 
Antarctic  exploration,  47. 
Anthropomorphism,  97. 
Anticipation,  62,  63. 
Apples,    87. 
Art,  Ancient,  76. 
Assistance,  31,  34,  35. 
Atrophe,  125. 

Beauty,  77,  130. 
Beginning  or  end,  6. 
Bicycle,  46. 
Birds'  nest,  8. 
Birth,  12,  17,  26 
Blake,  80. 
Body,  8,  16-21,  22. 
Body,  Spiritual,  23. 
Boundaries,   120. 
Bro\vning,  74. 

Calm,  49,  50,  61,  127. 
Cathedral,  37. 


Chaos,  48. 

Character,  53. 

Child  nature.  111. 

Childhood,  25. 

Childish  views,  70,  98. 

Choice,  27,  63. 

Choice  of  pain,  53,  55. 

Chosen  people,  90. 

Christ,  36,  114. 

Christmas,  35. 

Civilisation,   41. 

Clairvoyance,  61. 

Cloud,  4. 

Cold  and  heat,  106,  107. 

Comets'  tails,    143. 

Competition,  40,  108. 

Conceived       by       the       Holy 

Ghost,  37. 
Conception,  36. 
Confirmation  of  law,  135. 
Conflict,  30,  48. 
Constructing  the   body,    17. 
Contrast,  104. 
Cooling  of  earth,  142. 
Creation,  37,  38,  48,  92. 
Crossing  the  bar,  16.  ' 

Danger,  53. 

Darkness  and  light,   106. 

Darwin,  120. 

Dates,  35. 

Death,  7,  8,  12. 

163 


164 


EEASON  AND  BELIEF 


Deductions,  146. 
Denials,  84. 
Design,  37. 
Destiny,   90. 
Discipline,  29. 
Disease,  108,  109. 
Dissected   puzzle,    140. 
Dissipation  of  energy,  6. 
Divine  will,  39. 
Divinity,  96. 

Dog  in  picture  gallery,  78. 
Drama,  Ancient,  76. 

Earth  a  heavenly  body,  40. 

Earthen  vessels,  56. 

Ecstasy,  49. 

Eden,  Garden  of,  87. 

Engraving,   107. 

Ether  and  matter,  83. 

and  motion,  97. 

Ethics,  99. 

Evil  and  good,  106. 

Problem  of,  103. 

Evolution,  18. 
Exertion,  45. 
Existence,  101. 

Faix,  28,  92. 

Fire,   109. 

First  man,  19,  28,  93. 

Force  and  inertia,  105. 

Foresight,  62. 

Francis   Thompson,   34,   53. 

Freedom,  27,  29,  92,  102,  113. 

Perfect,   30. 

Garden  of  Hespeeides,  87. 

Gardener,  112. 

Good  and  evil^  27,  106. 


Gradual   revelation,  96. 
Guesses,   145. 

Heat  and  cold,  106. 
Heroes  of  the  race,  89. 
Herschel,  6. 

Hesperides,  Garden  of,  87. 
Holidays,  45. 
Holy  Ghost,  37. 
Human  ancestry,  28. 

-nature,  48. 

Humanity,  95. 
Hypotheses,  147,  148. 

Idleness,  45. 
Immunity,  42. 
Incarnation,    17,    35-37,    87, 

97. 
Individual   assemblage,   6. 
Individuality,  9,  10,  12,  18. 
Inequalities,  40. 
Inertia  and  force,  105. 
Innocence,  28,  94,   103. 
Inspiration,  57,  64,  80,  121. 
Intuitions,  121,  128,  146,  154. 

Jesus,  56,  57. 

Joy  and  suffering,   104,  105. 

of  the  Lord,  51. 

Judges,  73. 

Keats,  148. 
Kelvin,  Lord,  97. 
Kepler,  141,   144. 
Kingdom  of  Heaven,  40,  41, 
110. 

Larmob,  Sir  Joseph,   133. 
Lethe,  24. 


INDEX 


1G5 


Light  and  darkness,   106. 
Logos,  22,  37,  101. 

Manich^ism,   104. 
Materialism,  78. 
Matter  and  ether,  84. 
Memory,  9,  24,  25. 
Mendel,  120. 

Messiah,  57,  58,   86,   108. 
Methuselah,  64. 
Migration,  90. 
Millennium,  40. 
Milton,  29. 
Missionary  work,  63. 
Moon,  79. 
Morality,  100. 
Multiple  personality,   124. 
Music,  78. 

Myers'   poems   quoted,   2,    15, 
20,  21,  29,  40,  47,  57,  64. 

Nebxji^,  6. 
New'ton,  144-160, 
Newtonian  method,  120. 
Night's  candles,  75. 

Old  age,  45. 
Optimism,  102. 
Origins,  92. 
Ottley,  Professor,   100. 

Fain,  51. 

Choice  of,  53,  54. 

Pains,  Taking,  52. 

Pantheism,  82. 

Parable  of  the  Talents,  51. 

Peace  of  God,  50. 

Perception,  33. 

Perfect  freedom,  31. 


Personality,    10,   12,   114. 

Strata  of,  24. 

Pessimism,    102. 

Picture  gallery,  78. 

Plants,  112. 

Plato,   23. 

Plotinus,  15,  49,  127. 

Poetry,  Truth  of,  76. 

Possessions,  11. 

Potentiality  of  the  race,  114. 

Poverty,  112. 

Pre-existence,   14,   16,  23. 

Prevision,  63,  64,  65. 

Priestcraft,  88. 

Priestley,  144. 

Primeval  man,  18. 

Principia,  143. 

Privation,  47. 

Problem  of  evil,  104. 

Progress,   115. 

Prometlieus,   109. 

Puzzle,  Dissected,    142. 

Quotations,  156. 

RAoruM,  137. 

Reaction  and  resistance,   104. 

Reality,  77,  92. 

Receptivity,    121,    128. 

Redeeming  agency,  43. 

Redemption,  43. 

Reform,  41. 

Reminiscence,   13,   14,  58,   59. 

Resistance  and  reaction,   104. 

Responsibility,   110. 

Rest,  50. 

Revelation,   32. 

Gradual,  96. 

Rock,  3,  5. 


166                REASON  AND  BELIEF 

Komeo,  75. 

Taking  Pains,  62. 

Ten  Commandments,   99. 

Sabbath,  48. 

Testing    of    hypotheses,    147, 

Sacrifice,  52,  53. 

148. 

St.  Paul,  22. 

Theology,  97. 

Salvation,  43,  44. 

Thompson,  Francis,  34,  41. 

Sandstone,  3. 

Thought,  36. 

Saul,  43. 

Thrush,   148. 

Scientific  explorers 

,  124 

[,   125, 

Trance,  24,  25. 

126. 

Transfiguration,  57. 

Scientific  method, 

137, 

144. 

Treadmill,   46. 

Second  Advent,  41. 

Truth  of  literature,  74,  75. 

Selection,  143. 

Service,  31,  44,  52, 

111, 

115. 

Ulysses,  46. 

Shell,  Murmur  of, 

126, 

153. 

Sin,  28,  93,  99,  104. 

Vaughan,  9,  14. 

Sleep,  7. 

Vicarious  suffering,  51,  63,  54. 

Slums,    115. 

Vision,  48,  50. 

Soul,  29. 

Spiritual  body,  22. 

Weeds,  110. 

Stagnation,  45. 

Wood,  4. 

Still  small  voice,  50, 

Word,  37,  38,  65. 

Substance  of  faith 

154 

. 

Wordsworth,  23,  34. 

Suffering,  44. 

Working      hypotheses,       134, 

-Vicarious,  51, 

53. 

54. 

135,  140. 

SuJirise,  80. 

Worship,  80,  96. 

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